Then Christian returned from the States, where he had been for a longer time than usual.

He came late at night, and so intoxicated that I was obliged to go myself and fasten the canoe, which would have floated away before morning.

When I followed him into the house he was already fast asleep, and it was not till the next day that I knew what had brought him home.

Then he told me.

What I understood--for he said as little as possible on the subject--was, that he had been for the last few weeks in the company of a party of gamblers, to whom he had lost everything he possessed, and, finally, that having found means of raising money upon the security of the whole fortune to which I was entitled, he had lost that too, and consequently we remained penniless.