it here in the hotel, you may do what you like, and welcome! It's
the proper course, no doubt; only I've had publicity enough, and
would sooner have felt that blade in my body than set my name going
again in the newspapers."

"I understand," he said, with his well-bred sympathy, which never
went a shade too far; and he dropped the weapon into a drawer, as
the boots entered with the tray. In a minute he had brewed two
steaming jorums of spirits-and-water; as he handed me one, I feared
he was going to drink my health, or toast my luck; but no, he was
the one man I had met who seemed, as he said, to "understand."
Nevertheless, he had his toast.

"Here's confusion to the criminal classes in general," he cried;
"but death and damnation to the owners of that knife!"

And we clinked tumblers across the little oval table in the middle
of the room. It was more of a sitting-room than mine; a bright
fire was burning in the grate, and my companion insisted on my
sitting over it in the arm-chair, while for himself he fetched the
one from his bedside, and drew up the table so that our glasses
should be handy. He then produced a handsome cigar-case admirably
stocked, and we smoked and sipped in the cosiest fashion, though
without exchanging many words.

You may imagine my pleasure in the society of a youth, equally
charming in looks, manners and address, who had not one word to say
to me about the Lady Jermyn or my hen-coop. It was unique. Yet
such, I suppose, was my native contrariety, that I felt I could have
spoken of the catastrophe to this very boy with less reluctance than