ugh, added, "I was going to
say fifty pounds, quite forgetting that it was possible you might beat
me."

"And yet, sir, I have the presumption to think that there are things
which I could do fully as well as Dr. Layton."

Layton turned hastily round from the table, where, having half filled a
large glass with brandy, he was about to fill up with soda-water; he set
down the unopened soda-water bottle, and, drinking off the raw spirit at
a draught, said,--

"What are they? Let's hear them, for I take the challenge; these
gentlemen be my witnesses that I accepted the gage before I knew your
weapon." Here he replenished his glass, and this time still higher than
before, and drank it off. "You have, doubtless, your speciality, your
pet subject, art or science, what is it? Or have you more than one?
You're not like the fellow that Scott tells us could only talk of tanned
leather,--eh, Millar, you remember that anecdote?"

The rector started with that sort of spasm that unobtrusive men feel
when first accosted familiarly by those almost strangers to them.

"Better brandy than this I never tasted," said Layton, now filling out a
bumper, while his hand shook so much that he spilled the liquor over
the table; "and, as Tom Warren-dar used to say, as he who gives you
unpleasant advice is bound in honor to lend you money, so he who gives
you light claret, if he be a man of honor, will console you with old
brandy afterwards; and you are a man of honor, Millar, and a man of
conscience, and so is our colonel here,--albeit nothing remarkable in
other respects; and as for that public servant, as he likes to call
himself,--the public servant, if I must be candid,--the public servant
is neither more nor less than--" Here he stretched out his arm to its
full length, to give by the gesture greater emphasis to what he was
about to utter, and then staling half wildly, half insolently around
him, he sank down heavily into a deep armchair, and as his arms dropped
listlessly beside him, fell back insensible.

"I will say that I never felt deeper obligation to a brandy-bottle; it
is the first enjoyable moment of the whole evening," said Ogden, as he
sat down to the tea-table.

In somewhat less than half an hour afterwards, Layton awoke with a sort
of start, and looked wildly and confusedly around him. What or how much
he remembered of the events of the evening, is not possible to say,
as, with a sudden spring to his feet, he took his hat,