en the
good man and the bad? I have known men with regard to whom I was convinced
that they were admirably equipped by nature for a career of roguery;
somewhere in the backs of their heads I know they carried a complete set of
intellectual implements for the task, but no temptation, as it happened,
ever came to open the door of that secret chamber, and the unconscious
owners of it passed through life honoured by their fellow-citizens, and
their actions still smell sweet and blossom in their dust. Others, of
course, were not so fortunate. Their crisis pursued and captured them,
revealed them to themselves and others, and in many cases only left them,
alas, after cropping both their hair and their reputations. But I leave
these divagations, which can have but little interest for you. What I
rather wish to do is to recall to your memory the curious personality and
the chequered adventures of our common friend, WILFRID COBBYN.

[Illustration]

I met him some six years ago when I was on a visit to my father's old
friend, General TEMPEST, at Dansington. Most people, I take it, have heard
of Dansington, that home of educational establishments, amusement, and
retired Indian Generals. Old General TEMPEST--LEONIDAS MARLBOROUGH TEMPEST
he had been christened by a warlike father, whose military aspirations had
been crushed by the necessity for a commercial career, and who had taken it
out of fate by devoting his son to heroism at the baptismal font, and by
subsequently buying him a commission in a crack regiment--General TEMPEST
was, in the days of which I speak, a hospitable veteran whose amiability
and good-nature had survived many severe campaigns in which he had taken
and given hard knocks wherever hard knocks were to be found. His
benevolence and hospitality were proverbial far beyond the limits of
Dansington, and his daughter CLARA was one of the prettiest girls in the
United Kingdom.

On the occasion of this visit I found a fellow guest, the identical WILFRID
COBBYN whom I have already mentioned. He had been there for a fortnight, I
learnt from ALEXANDER, the eldest hope of the TEMPESTS, and had made
himself a favourite with every member of the family. How they got to know
him I never quite discovered--indeed, I doubt if any of them could have
told me--and as to his previous history all they seemed to know was that
his father had property "somewhere in the West of England," that he himself
had travelled a great deal, and w