t eight. This is not the Star
and Garter," said he as he left us.

It was the captain who spoke first, though he swallowed twice before the
words came out.

"Come, Richard, come, laddie," he said, "'tis no so bad it micht-na be
waur. We'll mak the maist o' it."

"I care not for myself, Captain Paul," I replied, marvelling the more at
him, "but to think that I have landed you here, that this is my return
for your sacrifice."

"Hoots! How was ye to foresee Mr. Manners was a blellum?" And he broke
into threats which, if Mr. Marmaduke had heard and comprehended, would
have driven him into the seventh state of fear. "Have you no other
friends in London?" he asked, regaining his English.

I shook my head. Then came--a question I dreaded.

"And Mr. Manners's family?"

"I would rather remain here for life," I said, "than to them now."

For pride is often selfish, my dears, and I did not reflect that if I
remained, the captain would remain likewise.

"Are they all like Mr. Manners?"

"That they are not," I returned with more heat than was necessary; "his
wife is goodness itself, and his daughter--" Words failed me, and I
reddened.

"Ah, he has a daughter, you say," said the captain, casting a
significant look at me and beginning to pace the little room. He was
keener than I thought, this John Paul.

If it were not so painful a task, my dears, I would give you here some
notion of what a London sponging-house was in the last century. Comyn
has heard me tell of it, and I have seen Bess cry over the story.
Gaming was the king-vice of that age, and it filled these places
to overflowing. Heaven help a man who came into the world with that
propensity in the early days of King George the Third. Many, alas,
acquired it before they were come to years of discretion. Next me, at
the long table where we were all thrown in together,--all who could not
pay for private meals,--sat a poor fellow who had flung away a patrimony
of three thousand a year. Another had even mortgaged to a Jew his
prospects on the death of his mother, and had been seized by the
bailiffs outside of St. James's palace, coming to Castle Yard direct
from his Majesty's levee. Yet another, with such a look of dead hope
in his eyes as haunts me yet, would talk to us by the hour of the
Devonshire house where he was born, of the green valley and the peaceful
stream, and of the old tower-room, caressed by trees, where Queen Bess
had once lain under the carved oak