There were the stormy revellers, as the rabble rout of Comus and his crew, filling that luxurious room with the sounds of noisy execration and half-drunken strife.

Young Sir John, a free and generous fellow, by far the best among them all, has collected about him those whom he thought friends, to celebrate his wished majority; they had now kept it up, night after night, hard upon a week; and, as well became such friends--the gambler, the duellist, the man of pleasure, and the fool of Fashion--they never yet had separated for their day-light beds, without a climax to their orgie, something like the present scene.
Henry Mynton, high in oath, and dashing down his cards, has charged Sir Richard Hunt with cheating (it was _sauter la coupe_ or _couper la saut_, or some such mystery of iniquity, I really cannot tell which): Sir Richard, a stout dark man, the patriarch of the party, glossily wigged upon his head, and imperially tufted on his chin, retorts with a pungent sarcasm, calmly and coolly uttered; that hot-headed fool Silliphant, clearly quite intoxicated, backs his cousin Mynton's view of the case by the cogent argument of a dice-box at Sir Richard's head--and at once all is struggle, strife, and uproar.

The other guests, young fellows of high fashion, now too much warmed with wine to remember their accustomed Mohican cold-bloodedness--those happy debtors to the prowess of a Stultz, and walking advertisers of Nugee--take eager part with the opposed belligerents: more than one decanter is sent hissing through the air; more than one bloody coxcomb witnesses to the weight of a candle-stick and its hurler's clever aim: uplifted chairs are made the weapons of the chivalric combatants; and along with divers other less distinguished victims in the melee, poor Sir John Vincent, rushing into the midst, as a well-intentioned host, to quell the drunken brawl, gets knocked down among them all; the tables are upset, the bright gold runs about the room in all directions--ha! no one heeds it--no one owns it--one little piece rolled right up to the window-sill where Roger still looked on with all his eyes; it is but to put his hand in--the window is open to the floor--nay a finger is enough: greedily, one undecided moment, did he gaze upon the gold; he saw the hideous contrast of his own dim hovel and that radiant chamber--he remembered the pining faces of his babes, and gentle Grace with all her hardships--he thought upon his poverty and well deserts--he looked upon wastefulness of wealth and wantonness of living--these reflections struck him in a moment; no one saw him, no one cared about the gold; that little blessed morsel, that could do him so much good; all was confusion, all was opportunity, and who can wonder that his fingers closed upon the sovereign, and that he picked it up?
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