t going to hear my father called a beast," said John, with a
beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound rivet of the chain
that bound him to life.

But Alan was quite good-natured.

"All right, old fellow," said he. "Mos' respec'able man your father."
And he introduced his friend to his companions as "old Nicholson the
what-d'ye-call-um's son."

John sat in dumb agony. Collette's foul walls and spotted table-linen,
everything even down to Collette's villainous casters, seemed like
objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a
scurrying: the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill,
appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken _flagrante delicto_, with
their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the police
office, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent
case against that arch-shebeener, Collette.

It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came forth again.
The vague terror of public opinion weighed generally on them all; but
there were private and particular horrors on the minds of individuals.
Alan stood in dread of his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the
group was the son of a country minister, another of a judge; John, the
unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson to father, the idea of facing
whom on such a scandalous subject was physically sickening. They stood a
while consulting under the buttresses of St. Giles'; thence they
adjourned to the lodgings of one of the number in North Castle Street,
where (for that matter) they might have had quite as good a supper, and
far better drink, than in the dangerous paradise from which they had
been routed. There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated their
position. Each explained that he had the world to lose if the affair
went on, and he appeared as a witness. It was remarkable what bright
prospects were just then in the very act of opening before each of that
little company of youths, and what pious consideration for the feelings
of their families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, was in an
odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his share of the fine; not
one but evinced a wonderful twinkle of hope that each of the others (in
succession) was the very man who could step in to make good the deficit.
One took a high hand: he could not pay his share; if it went to a trial,
he should bolt; he had always felt the English Bar to be his true
sphere. Another branched