blandly, 'but will you have your own trousers tonight, Oswald, or
will you wear mine back to your lodgings now, and I'll send one of
the servants round with yours for them in the morning?'

'Thanks,' said Harry Oswald, slapping the sides of the unopened
dust-coat; 'I think I'll go home as I am at present, and I'll recover
the marks of the Beast again to-morrow. You see, I didn't betray
my evening waistcoat after all, now did I?'

And they parted at the corner, each of them going his own way in
his own mood and manner.



CHAPTER II.

THE COASTS OF THE GENTILES.


The decayed and disfranchised borough of Calcombe Pomeroy, or
Calcombe-on-the-Sea, is one of the prettiest and quietest little
out-of-the-way watering-places in the whole smiling southern slope
of the county of Devon. Thank heaven, the Great Western Railway,
when planning its organised devastations along the beautiful rural
region of the South Hams, left poor little Calcombe out in the cold;
and the consequence is that those few people who still love to
linger in the uncontaminated rustic England of our wiser forefathers
can here find a beach unspoiled by goat-carriages or black-faced
minstrels, a tiny parade uninvaded by stucco terraces or German
brass bands, and an ancient stone pier off which swimmers may take