said Harry, "you look a little down in the
mouth--a trifle seedy. No bad luck, I hope?"

"Oh no," said Ashby, "nothing in particular."

"The fact is, you seem to have lost your high moral tone, and your
former happy flow of genial conversation. I don't want to be a Paul
Pry, my dear boy; but if you wish to gain sympathy and find a friend
who can hear and help, why, all I can say is--here you have him."

"Well," said Ashby, "I'm a little preoccupied, that's a fact."

"Preoccupied? That's your name for it, is it? Well, suppose we adopt
that word--what then?"

Ashby knocked the ashes off his cigar with a reflective look, and
said, "I rather think, Harry, that I had better make you my
father-confessor."

"All right," said Harry; "that's what I was made for. Go ahead, my
son. Confess--out with it. Cleanse your bosom of its perilous stuff:
make a clean breast of it."

"Well," said Ashby, "in the first place, I'm just now meditating
matrimony."

"Matrimony!"

"Yes; but that's not all. It's a sort of runaway match."

"A runaway match! By Jove! Only think of a fellow like you planning a
runaway match! Now if it was me, it would be the proper thing. But is
it really to be a runaway match?"

"Well, it amounts to that, for I've asked the girl to clear out from
her friends and come with me."

"Well, old fellow, all I can say is, good luck to you both. And
please, mayn't I be the best man?" he added, with a droll accent that
brought an involuntary smile to Ashby's face. "But go on. Who is the
charmer? and where is she now?"

"Well, to answer your last question first, she's here--in Burgos."

"Ah," said Harry, "I twig! Came on in the same train. Both planned it
together. You cut across the border, and are made one. Why, it's like
Gretna Green!"

"Well, you've hit it partly, only she's with her friends just
now--that is to say, she's with her guardian and his wife; and the
problem to be solved by me is, how I am to get her from those two
dragons."

"Oh, that can be done. But now, my boy, to come to the point, who is
she?--her name?"

"Her name," said Ashby, "is Westlotorn--Katie Westlotorn."

"Westlotorn," repeated Harry: "never saw her, and don't think I ever
heard the name in all my life."

"I got acquainted with her at Cadiz a few months ago," said Ashby.
"Her father had been a merchant there, and had died about a year
before. She was there with her step-mother, who took no particular
care of her--a misera