d claret on this chilly
night?"
"With all my heart," replied Wilton Brown, for we need hardly tell
the reader that it was he who had last entered the room at the Nag's
Head; and Green, turning to the drawer, said, "This gentleman and I
will take a bottle of Burgundy. Let it be that which the landlord
knows of."
"I understand, sir--I understand," replied the drawer, "last Monday
night's;" and Wilton and his companion were soon busily discussing
their wine, and talking together, upon various indifferent things, in
a voice which could be heard at the neighbouring tables. Green spoke
with ease and grace, and had altogether so much the tone of a
well-bred man of the world, that he might have passed for such in the
highest society in the realm. Wilton found the task a more difficult
one, for his mind was eagerly bent upon other subjects. He laboured
to play his part to the best, however; and Green, laughing, showed
him how to drink his wine out of goblets, as he called it; so that
the matter was brought to a conclusion sooner than he had ventured to
hope.
As the bottle drew to its close, Green took an opportunity of saying,
in a low voice, "Come with me when I go out."
Wilton answered in the same tone, "Must you not make some excuse?"
"Oh, I will show you one--I will show you one!" exclaimed Green,
aloud--"if you have never seen one, I will show you one within five
minutes from this time. I have but to speak a word to some of my
friends at these different tables, and then you shall come with me."
This was heard all through the room; and Wilton seeing that the
excuse was already made, said no more, but, "Very well, I am ready
when you like."
Green then rose, and went round those to whom he had before spoken,
addressing each of them again in the same order.
"I will meet you, Harry," he said to the first, who had so readily
made an affirmative answer, "in three quarters of an hour. Don't be
longer, my good fellow, if you can help it. Master Williamson," he
added, when he came up to the other, speaking in as low a tone as
possible, "I think you would have given up your game at cards, if you
had known what I had to tell you and Davis there, opposite."
There was something dark and meaning in Green's look as he spoke, a
knitting of the brows, a drawing together of the eyelids, and a tight
shutting of the mouth between every three or four words, which made
the man turn a little white.
"Why, what is the matter, Colonel?" he said, in a much civiler tone
than b