CHAPTER EIGHT.
A GAMBLER AT HOME It was morning, and Mr.Gilmore sat by his cheerful open fire in that front room of his, where by night were supposed to flourish those games of chance which were such an offense to the "better element" in Mount Hope.

Mr.Gilmore was hardly a person of unexceptional taste, though he had no suspicion of this fact, since he counted that room quite all that any gentleman's parlor should be.
It was a large room furnished in dark velvet and heavy walnut.

The red velvet curtains at the windows, when drawn at night, permitted no ray of light to escape; the carpet was a gorgeous Brussels affair, the like of which both as to cost and enduring splendor was not to be found elsewhere on any floor in Mount Hope.

Seated as he then was, Gilmore could look, if so disposed, at the reflection of his own dark but not unhandsome face in a massive gilt-framed mirror that reached from chimneypiece to ceiling; or, glancing about the room, his eyes could dwell with genuine artistic pleasure on numerous copies in crayon of French figure-studies; nor were the like of these to be found elsewhere in Mount Hope.
Gilmore had quitted the McBride cottage some three hours before, and in the interim had breakfasted well and napped abstemiously.

Presently he must repair to the court-house, where, it had already been intimated, the coroner might wish to confer with him.
Marshall Langham he had not seen.