Keeper Somers--Sir Isaac Newton--Mr. John Locke--gentry of that
sort. It is fitting I should have better garb than this which we have
brought with us."

"You are ever free with some mad jest or other, Jack; but what is this
new madness of which you speak?"

"No madness at all, my dear boy; for in fact I have but come from the
council chamber, where I have met these very gentlemen whom I have
named to you. But pray you note, my dear brother, there are those who
hold John Law, and his studies, not so light as doth his own brother.
For myself, the matter furnishes no surprise at all. As for you, you had
never confidence in me, nor in yourself. Gad! Will, hadst but the
courage of a flea, what days we two might have together here in this old
town!"

"I want none of such days, Jack," said Will Law, soberly. "I care most
to see you settled in some decent way of living. What will your mother
say, if we but go on gaming and roistering, with dangers of some sudden
quarrel--as this which has already sprung up--with no given aim in life,
with nothing certain for an ambition--"

"Now, Will," began his brother, yet with no petulance in his tone, "pray
go not too hard with me at the start. I thought I had done fairly well,
to sit at the table of the council of coinage on my first day in London.
'Tis not every young man gets so far as that. Come, now, Will!"

"But after all, there must be serious purpose."

"Know then," cried the elder man, suddenly, "that I have found such
serious purpose!"

The speaker stood looking out of the window, his eye fixed out across
the roofs of London. There had now fallen from his face all trace of
levity, and into his eye and mouth there came reflex of the decision of
his speech. Will stirred in his chair, and at length the two faced each
other.

"And pray, what is this sudden resolution, Jack?" said Will Law.

"If I must tell you, it is simply this: I am resolved to marry the girl
we met at Sadler's Wells."

"How--what--?"

"Yes, how--what--?" repeated his brother, mockingly.

"But I would ask, which?"

"There was but one," said John Law. "The tall one, with the
brassy-brown, copper-red hair, the bright blue eye, and the figure of a
queen. Her like is not in all the world!"

"Methought 'twas more like to be the other," replied Will. "Yet you--how
dare you think thus of that lady? Why, Jack, 'twas the Lady Catharine
Knollys, sister to the Earl of Banbury!"

Law did not at once make an