He was known by sight to a score of billiard- markers, potmen, blacklegs, and lower characters still, and was on nodding terms with fully half of them.

He had lost considerably more than he had gained at billiards, and was still further emptying his purse at cards.

Quick work for a few weeks! So quickly and fatally, alas! Will the infection, once admitted, spread, especially in a patient whose moral constitution has undergone so long a course of slow preparation as Tom's had.
The day came at last.

Tom had carefully hidden away his worst books and his spirits; he had bathed his face half a dozen times, to remove the traces of last night's intemperance he had gathered together from the corners where they had for so long lain neglected the books and relics of his Randlebury days, and restored them to their old places; he had brightened me up, and he had taken pains to purify his room from the smell of rank tobacco; and then he sauntered down to the station.
How my heart beat as the train came into the platform! _His_ head was out of the window, and _his_ hand was waving to us a hundred yards off; and the next minute he had burst from the carriage, and seized Tom by the hands.
"How are you, old Tom?
I thought we'd never get here; how glad I am to set eyes on you! Isn't this a spree ?" And not waiting for Tom's answer he hauled his traps out of the carriage in a transport of delight.
Still the same jovial, honest, fine-hearted boy.
"Hi! here! some of you," he shouted to a porter, "look after these things, will you, and get us a cab.

I tell you what, Tom, you've got to come up home with me first, and we can have dinner there; then I'll come on to your den, and we can pack our knapsacks and sleep, and then start by the five train to-morrow morning." Thus he bustled, and thus he brought back the old times on poor Tom Drift.