impossible; he couldn't help himself.

'If you have a beast of a father,' said he, 'I can tell you I
have a brute of a trustee.'

'I'm not going to hear my father called a beast,' said John
with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last sound
rivet of the chain that bound him to life.

But Alan was quite good-natured.

'All right, old fellow,' said he. 'Mos' respec'able man your
father.' And he introduced his friend to his companions as
'old Nicholson the what-d'ye-call-um's son.'

John sat in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate
table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters,
seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came
a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent
from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party,
taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow,
were seized, marched up to the police office, and all duly
summoned to appear as witnesses in the consequent case
against that arch-shebeener, Colette.

It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that came
forth again. The vague terror of public opinion weighed
generally on them all; but there were private and particular
horrors on the minds of individuals. Alan stood in dread of
his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the group was the