I play for keeps in this;
no monkeying. I've had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for Babylon.
I've lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory. I've had
my day with my mother's people; voila! for my father's. You heard what
Becky Lawson said. My father was sick of it at twenty-five, and got out.
We'll see what my father's son will do.... I'm going to say my say to
you, and have done with it. As like as not there isn't another man that
I'd have brought with me. You're all right. But I'm not going to rub
noses. I stick when I do stick, but I know what's got to be done here;
and I've told you. You'll not have the fun out of it that I will, but
you won't have the worry. Now, we start fresh. I'm to be obeyed; I'm
Napoleon. I've got a devil, yet it needn't hurt you, and it won't. But
if I make enemies here--and I'm sure to--let them look out. Give me your
hand, Jacques; and don't you forget that there are two Gaston Belwards,
and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one you want to
remember when you get raw with the new one. For you'll hear no more
slang like this from me, and you'll have to get used to lots of things."

Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused
on the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques. It was now dusk, and the
landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm.

"It's all of a piece," Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim
hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to
Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening
and shutting. There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to
think of his own appearance among the guests.

"It's a pity I haven't clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going
there."

He had dropped again into the new form of master and man. His voice was
cadenced, gentlemanly. Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag.

"No, no, they are not the things needed. I want the evening-dress which
cost that cool hundred dollars in New York."

Still Jacques was silent. He did not know whether, in his new position,
he was expected to suggest. Belward understood, and it pleased him.

"If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of
furs, you'd find a way, Brillon."

"Voila," said Jacques; "then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the
red-silk sash, and the boots like these?"--tapping his own leathers.
"You look a grand seigneur so."

"But I am here to look an English gentle