pall upon him.

When he had sat thus ten minutes, smiling at intervals, a stir about the
door announced that his companions were returning. The landlord preceded
them, and was rewarded for his pains with half a guinea; the crowd with
a shower of small silver. The postillions cracked their whips, the
horses started forward, and amid a shrill hurrah my lord's carriage
rolled away from the door.

'Now, who casts?' the peer cried briskly, arranging himself in his
seat. 'George, I'll set you. The old stakes?'

'No, I am done for to-night,' Sir George answered yawning without
disguise.

'What! crabbed, dear lad?'

'Ay, set Berkeley, my lord. He's a better match for you.'

'And be robbed by the first highwayman we meet? No, no! I told you, if I
was to go down to this damp hole of mine--fancy living a hundred miles
from White's! I should die if I could not game every day--you were to
play with me, and Berkeley was to ensure my purse.'

'He would as soon take it,' Sir George answered languidly, gazing
through the glass.

'Sooner, by--!' cried the third traveller, a saturnine, dark-faced man
of thirty-four or more, who sat with his back to the horses, and toyed
with a pistol that lay on the seat beside him. 'I'm content if your