train began to slacken speed before Bishopstoke station. 'You had best
get out at my door, and I can bring your friend.'

Mr Wickham, whom we left (as the reader has shrewdly suspected)
beginning to 'play billy' with the labels in the van, was a young
gentleman of much wealth, a pleasing but sandy exterior, and a highly
vacant mind. Not many months before, he had contrived to get himself
blackmailed by the family of a Wallachian Hospodar, resident for
political reasons in the gay city of Paris. A common friend (to whom he
had confided his distress) recommended him to Michael; and the lawyer
was no sooner in possession of the facts than he instantly assumed
the offensive, fell on the flank of the Wallachian forces, and, in the
inside of three days, had the satisfaction to behold them routed and
fleeing for the Danube. It is no business of ours to follow them on
this retreat, over which the police were so obliging as to preside
paternally. Thus relieved from what he loved to refer to as the
Bulgarian Atrocity, Mr Wickham returned to London with the most
unbounded and embarrassing gratitude and admiration for his saviour.
These sentiments were not repaid either in kind or degree; indeed,
Michael was a trifle ashamed of his new client's friendship; it had
taken many invitations to get him to Winchester and Wickham Manor; but
he had gone at last, and was now returning. It has been remarked by some
judicious thinker (possibly J. F. Smith) that Providence despises to
employ no instrument, however humble; and it is now plain to the dullest
that both Mr Wickham and the Wallachian Hospodar were liquid lead and
wedges in the hand of Destiny.

Smitten with the desire to shine in Michael's eyes and show himself a
person of original humour and resources, the young gentleman (who was a
magistrate, more by token, in his native county) was no sooner alone in