VANCE.--"Better take a model of your own. Village full of them; you
could bargain with a porpoise for half the money which I was duped into
squandering away on a chit! But don't look so grave; you may copy me if
you can!"

"Time to start, and must walk brisk, sir," said the jolly landlord,
looking in.

"Good-by, good-by."

And so departed Lionel Haughton upon an emprise as momentous to that
youth-errant as Perilous Bridge or Dragon's Cave could have been to
knight-errant of old.

"Before we decide on having done with each other, a short visit,"--so ran
the challenge from him who had everything to give unto him who had
everything to gain. And how did Lionel Haughton, the ambitious and
aspiring, contemplate the venture in which success would admit him within
the gates of the golden Carduel an equal in the lists with the sons of
paladins, or throw him back to the arms of the widow who let a first
floor in the back streets of Pimlico? Truth to say, as he strode
musingly towards the station for starting, where the smoke-cloud now
curled from the wheel-track of iron, truth to say, the anxious doubt
which disturbed him was not that which his friends might have felt on his
behalf. In words, it would have shaped itself thus,--"Where is that poor
little Sophy! and what will become of her--what?" But when, launched on
the journey, hurried on to its goal, the thought of the ordeal before him
forced itself on his mind, he muttered inly to himself, "Done with each
other; let it be as he pleases, so that I do not fawn on his pleasure.