hey felt the Red Sea under them. They nodded and whispered in
their consternation.

It was then that Mr. Fox got calmly up before the pack of frightened
mercenaries and argued (God save the mark!) for moderation. He had the
ear of the house in a second, and he spoke with all the confidence--this
youngster who had just reached his majority--he had used with me before
his intimates. I gaped with astonishment and admiration. The Lords,
said he, had plainly meant no insult to this honourable house, nor yet to
the honourable members. They had aimed at the common enemies of man, the
printers. And for this their heat was more than pardonable. My friend
at my side stopped his writing to swear under his breath. "Look at 'em!"
he cried; "they are turning already. He could argue Swedenborg into
popery!"

The deserters were coming back to the ranks, indeed, and North and Dyson
and Weymouth had ceased to look haggard, and were wreathed in smiles. In
vain did Mr. Burke harangue them in polished phrase. It was a language
North and Company did not understand, and cared not to learn. Their
young champion spoke the more worldly and cynical tongue of White's and
Brooks's, with its shorter sentences and absence of formality. And even
as the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose, Mr. Fox quoted history
and the classics, with plenty more that was not above the heads of the
booted and spurred country squires. And thus, for the third time, he
earned the gratitude of his gracious Majesty.

"Well, Richard," said he, slipping his arm through mine as we came out
into Parliament Street, "I promised you some sport. Have you enjoyed
it?"

I was forced to admit that I had.

"Let us to the 'Thatched House,' and have supper privately," he
suggested. "I do not feel like a company to-night." We walked on for
some time in silence. Presently he said:

"You must not leave us, Richard. You may go home to see your grandfather
die, and when you come back I will see about getting you a little borough
for what my father paid for mine. And you shall marry Dorothy, and
perchance return in ten years as governor of a principality. That is,
after we've ruined you at the club. How does that prospect sit?"

I wondered at the mood he was in, that made him choose me rather than the
adulation and applause he was sure to receive at Brooks's for the part he
had played that night. After we had satisfied our hunger,--for neither
of us had dined,--and poured out a bo