there?"

"No," said Mellot; "he tried hard for an invitation--stooped to work me
and Sabina. I believe she told him that she would sooner see him in the
Morgue than help him; and he is gone to the moors now, I believe."

"There is time then: I will write to her to-night;" and Campbell took up
his hat and went home to do it.

"Ah," said Scoutbush, taking his cigar meditatively from his mouth, "I
wonder how he does it! It's a gift, I always say, a wonderful gift!
Before he has been a week in a house, he'll have the confidence of every
woman in it,--and 'gad, he does it by saying the rudest things!--and the
confidence of all the youngsters the week after."

"A somewhat dangerous gift," said Elsley, drily.

"Ah, yes; he might play tricks if he chose: but there's the wonder, that
he don't. I'd answer for him with my own sister. I do every day of my
life--for I believe he knows how many pins she puts into her dress--and
yet there he is. As I said once in the mess-room--there was a youngster
there who took on himself to be witty, and talked about the still sow
supping the milk--the snob! You recollect him, Mellot? the attorney's
son from Brompton, who sold out;--we shaved his mustachios, put a bear
in his bed, and sent him home to his ma--And he said that Major Campbell
might be very pious, and all that: but he'd warrant--they were the
fellow's own words,--that he took his lark on the sly, like other men--
the snob! so I told him, I was no better than the rest, and no more I
am; but if any man dared to say that the Major was not as honest as his
own sister, I was his man at fifteen paces. And so I am, Claude!"