"'Nay,' says Mr. Walpole, making a face, for he hates a laugh at his
cost; nothing less than a young American giant, with the attire of Dr.
Benjamin Franklin and the manner of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. But he
had a whiff of deer leather about him, and shoulders and back and legs to
make his fortune at Hockley in the Hole, had he lived two generations
since. And he had with him a strange, Scotch sea-captain, who had
rescued him from pirates, bless you, no less. That is, he said he was a
sea-captain; but he talked French like a Parisian, and quoted Shakespeare
like Mr. Burke or Dr. Johnson. He may have been M. Caron de
Beaumarchais, for I never saw him, or a soothsayer, or Cagliostro the
magician, for he guessed my name.'

"'Guessed your name!' we cried, for the story was out of the ordinary.

"'Just that,' answered he, and repeated some damned verse I never heard,
with Horatio in it, and made them all laugh."

John Paul and I looked at each other in astonishment, and we, too,
laughed heartily. It was indeed an odd coincidence.

His Lordship continued:
"'Well, be that as it may,' said Horry, 'he was an able man of sagacity,
this sea-captain, and, like many another, had a penchant for being a
gentleman. But he was more of an oddity than Hertford's beast of
Gevaudan, and was dressed like Salvinio, the monkey my Lord Holland
brought back from his last Italian tour.'"

I have laughed over this description since, my dears, and so has John
Paul. But at that time I saw nothing funny in it, and winced with him