ting him, "how long have you known
her father?"

"Known him? I never saw him."

"Well, that certainly is cool; and how do you propose making his
acquaintance. Do you intend to make him a 'particeps criminis' in the
elopement of his own daughter, for a consideration to be hereafter paid
out of his own money?"

"Now, Harry, you've touched upon the point in which, you must confess,
my genius always stood unrivalled--acknowledge, if you are not dead to
gratitude--acknowledge how often should you have gone supperless to bed
in our bivouacs in the Peninsula, had it not been for the ingenuity of
your humble servant--avow, that if mutton was to be had, and beef to be
purloined, within a circuit of twenty miles round, our mess certainly
kept no fast days. I need not remind you of the cold morning on the
retreat from Burgos, when the inexorable Lake brought five men to the
halberds for stealing turkeys, that at the same moment, I was engaged in
devising an ox-tail soup, from a heifer brought to our tent in jack-boots
the evening before, to escape detection by her foot tracks."

"True, Jack, I never questioned your Spartan talent; but this affair,
time considered, does appear rather difficult."

"And if it were not, should I have ever engaged in it? No, no, Harry. I
put all proper value upon the pretty girl, with her two hundred thousand
pounds pin-money. But I honestly own to you, the intrigue, the scheme,
has as great charm for me as any part of the transaction."

"Well, Jack, now for the plan, then!"

"The plan! oh, the plan. Why, I have several; but since I have seen you,
and talked the matter over with you, I have begun to think of a new mode
of opening the trenches."

"Why, I don't see how I can possibly have admitted a single new ray of
light upon the affair."

"There are you quite wrong. Just hear me out without interruption, and
I'll explain. I'll first discover the locale of this worthy colonel
--'Hydrabad Cottage' he calls it; good, eh?--then I shall proceed to
make a tour of the immediate vicinity, and either be taken dangerously
ill in his grounds, within ten yards of the hall-door, or be thrown from
my gig at the gate of his avenue, and fracture my skull; I don't much
care which. Well, then, as I learn that the old gentleman is the most
kind, hospitable fellow in the world, he'll admit me at once; his
daughter will tend my sick couch--nurse--read to me; glorious fun,
Harry. I'll make fierce love