"Well, that certainly is cool; and how do you propose making his
acquaintance. Do you intend to make him a 'particeps criminis' in the
elopement of his own daughter, for a consideration to be hereafter paid
out of his own money?"

"Now, Harry, you've touched upon the point in which, you must confess,
my genius always stood unrivalled--acknowledge, if you are not dead to
gratitude--acknowledge how often should you have gone supperless to bed
in our bivouacs in the Peninsula, had it not been for the ingenuity of
your humble servant--avow, that if mutton was to be had, and beef to be
purloined, within a circuit of twenty miles round, our mess certainly
kept no fast days. I need not remind you of the cold morning on the
retreat from Burgos, when the inexorable Lake brought five men to the
halberds for stealing turkeys, that at the same moment, I was engaged in
devising an ox-tail soup, from a heifer brought to our tent in jack-boots
the evening before, to escape detection by her foot tracks."

"True, Jack, I never questioned your Spartan talent; but this affair,
time considered, does appear rather difficult."

"And if it were not, should I have ever engaged in it? No, no, Harry. I
put all proper value upon the pretty girl, with her two hundred thousand
pounds pin-money. But I honestly own to you, the intrigue, the scheme,
has as great charm for me as any part of the transaction."

"Well, Jack, now for the plan, then!"

"The plan! oh, the plan. Why, I have several; but since I have seen you,
and talked the matter over with you, I have begun to think of a new mode