John Jennings, being somewhat afflicted with rheumatic gout, was occasionally missing.

Then did Abigail Merritt take his place, and play with the sober concentration of a man and the quick wit of a woman.

Colonel Jack Lamson, whose partner she was, privately preferred her to John Jennings, whose overtaxed mental powers sometimes failed him in the memory of the cards; but being as intensely loyal to his friends as to his country, he never spoke to that effect.

He only, when the little, trim, black-haired woman made a brilliant stroke of _finesse_, with a quick flash of her bright eyes and wise compression of lips, smiled privately, as if to himself, with face bent upon his hand.
Whether Abigail Merritt played cards or not, she always brewed a great bowl of punch, as no one but she knew how to do, and set it out for the delectation of her husband and his friends.

The receipt for this punch--one which had been long stored in the culinary archives of the Merritt family, with the poundcake and other rich and toothsome compounds--had often, upon entreaty, been confided to other ambitious matrons, but to no purpose.