honour, you take a pleasure
to degrade it in my person."

"This is all very fine," says my lord; "but to us who know you of old,
you must be sure it signifies nothing. You take that alternative out of
which you think that you can make the most. Take it, if you can, in
silence; it will serve you better in the long-run, you may believe me,
than this ostentation of ingratitude."

"O, gratitude, my lord!" cries the Master, with a mounting intonation,
and his forefinger very conspicuously lifted up. "Be at rest: it will
not fail you. It now remains that I should salute these gentlemen whom
we have wearied with our family affairs."

And he bowed to each in succession, settled his walking-sword, and took
himself off, leaving every one amazed at his behaviour, and me not less
so at my lord's.

* * * * *

We were now to enter on a changed phase of this family division. The
Master was by no manner of means so helpless as my lord supposed, having
at his hand, and entirely devoted to his service, an excellent artist in
all sorts of goldsmith work. With my lord's allowance, which was not so
scanty as he had described it, the pair could support life; and all the
earnings of Secundra Dass might be laid upon one side for any future
purpose. That this was done, I have no doubt. It was in all likelihood
the Master's design to gather a sufficiency, and then proceed in quest
of that treasure which he had buried long before among the mountains; to
which, if he had confined himself, he would have been more happily
inspired. But unfortunately for himself and all of us, he took counsel
of his anger. The public disgrace of his arrival--which I sometimes
wonder he could manage to survive--rankled in his bones; he was in that
humour when a man--in the words of the old adage--will cut off his nose
to spite his face; and he must make himself a public spectacle in the
hopes that some of the disgrace might spatter on my lord.

He chose, in a poor quarter of the town, a lonely, small house of
boards, overhung with some acacias. It was furnished in front with a
sort of hutch opening, like that of a dog's kennel, but about as high as
a table from the ground, in which the poor man that built it had
formerly displayed some wares; and it was this which took the Master's
fancy, and possibly suggested his proceedings. It appears, on board the
pirate ship he had acquired some quickness with the needle--enough, at
least,