ans.

"It was touch-and-go work, Val," he said to his companion; "and if I
hadn't carried matters with a high hand, and sprung my position as an
officer in the English service upon those French ruffians, I don't know
where it would have ended."

"It might have come to a metallic ornamentation of the ankle, and some
amiable 444, who has murdered his grandmother with a red-hot poker and
extenuating circumstances, for your companion," murmured Valentine. "I
wouldn't try it on with that supererogatory king again on this side of
the Channel, if I were you."

The Captain bestowed a freezing look on his flippant _protege_ and then
commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended
in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an
unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers
for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material
was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the
sole of an infant's boot to the roof of a cathedral. There are times
when genius must stoop to pick up its daily pittance; and for twelve
months the elegant Horatio Paget was content to devote his best
energies to the perpetual praise of the Incorrodible and Indestructible
and Incombustible India-rubber, in consideration of a very modest
percentage on his commercial transactions in that material. To exert
the persuasive eloquence of a Burke or a Thurlow in order to induce a
man to roof his new warehouses with a fabric which you are aware will
be torn into ribbons by the first run of stormy weather, for the sake
of obtaining two-and-a-half per cent on his investment, may not be in
accordance with the honourable notions of a Bayard, and yet in a
commercial sense may be strictly correct. It was only when Captain
Paget had made a comfortable little purse out of his percentage upon
the Incorrodible and Incombustible that he discovered the extreme
degradation of his position as agent and traveller. He determined on
returning to the land of his birth. Joint-stock companies were
beginning to multiply in the commercial world at this period; and
wherever there are many schemes for the investment of public capital
there is room for such a man as Horatio Paget--a man who, with the aid
of a hired brougham, can inspire confidence in the breast of the least
daring speculator.

The Captain came, accompanied as usual by that plastic tool and
subaltern, Valentine Hawkeh