He was willing to cheat all the world,--so that he might succeed, and make a fortune, and become a big and a rich man; but he did not wish to cheat her.

It was his ambition now to carry her up with him, and he thought how he might best teach her to assist him in doing so,--how he might win her to help him in his cheating, especially in regard to her own father.

For to himself, to his own thinking, that which we call cheating was not dishonesty.

To his thinking there was something bold, grand, picturesque, and almost beautiful in the battle which such a one as himself must wage with the world before he could make his way up in it.

He would not pick a pocket, or turn a false card, or, as he thought, forge a name.
That which he did, and desired to do, took with him the name of speculation.