expect from his visit hither?"

"VOTO A DIOS," answered Lambourne, "I expected a better welcome than I
am like to meet, I think."

"Why, thou gallows-bird--thou jail-rat--thou friend of the hangman
and his customers!" replied Foster, "hast thou the assurance to expect
countenance from any one whose neck is beyond the compass of a Tyburn
tippet?"

"It may be with me as you say," replied Lambourne; "and suppose I grant
it to be so for argument's sake, I were still good enough society
for mine ancient friend Anthony Fire-the-Fagot, though he be, for the
present, by some indescribable title, the master of Cumnor Place."

"Hark you, Michael Lambourne," said Foster; "you are a gambler now, and
live by the counting of chances--compute me the odds that I do not, on
this instant, throw you out of that window into the ditch there."

"Twenty to one that you do not," answered the sturdy visitor.

"And wherefore, I pray you?" demanded Anthony Foster, setting his teeth
and compressing his lips, like one who endeavours to suppress some
violent internal emotion.

"Because," said Lambourne coolly, "you dare not for your life lay a
finger on me. I am younger and stronger than you, and have in me a
double portion of the fighting devil, though not, it may be, quite so
much of the undermining fiend, that finds an underground way to his
purpose--who hides halters under folk's pillows, and who puts rats-bane