unless, indeed, he has made something out of his
whist here. Shall we go and see him, Sir John?
By the way, I forget did you know him?"

"Not met him for years," said Sir John. "But
I have a particular reason for wishing to meet
him now." Then he told Major Carter (whom he
said he saw was " a man of the world ") what
this reason was.

"Just the man!" cried the major. "You have
a surprising instinct, Sir John! Why, he could
write a book, the most delightful work of our
times, all the scandal, all the divorces, all the
esclandres—the true history, you understand, Sir
John?  He has them all at his fingers' ends. It
would be the most fascinating work."

The old Peninsular colonel must have made
profit out of his whist; for he was still in town,
in the bay-window of his club, with his newspaper
attached to a stick, which he handled as if he were
a pointsman signalling a train. He had a very
large hat on. The blood in his face was so
marbled and extravasated that it seemed as if
made out of good Bologna sausage; while his
stock was so stiff and straight that it seemed as
if he were always looking out of an iron chimney-
pot after having newly swept a gigantic chimney.
He was glad to see Carter, and was glad to see
Carter's friend, for he had just done with his
pointsman's flag, and was thinking of sherry.
"Have something?"  he said. " No?" And
having "had something" himself, the marbled
Bologna sausage surface seemed to become
illuminated from within, and glowed.

The major very soon led them across France into
the Peninsula, and took them back some thirty or
forty years, and called up Lord Wellington and
Pack, and Beresford, and that " chicken-hearted"
scoundrel, Joseph. " Why, dammy!" roared the
colonel, the Bologna sausage distending alarmingly,
"we had a little drummer that would
have stood up to him, and made him run."

"You had queer days in Madrid that time,
colonel," said the major.

"Ay, ay," said the Peninsular colonel, "both
then and later. I was there in 'twenty-five, too,
and met some of the old set. What times we
had, sir. Dammy, sir, there are no men on earth
now. No men, sir, with real heads and stomachs.
They don't know how to drink! It ain't life now;
at least, it ain't life as it used to be"—then the
colonel added a dropping shot after a volley—
"dammy!"

"The colonel," said Major Carter to Sir John,
with great approbation, " knows, and has seen a
great deal. It is really instructive to hear him."

"Bless you!" said Colonel Foley (using the
benediction precisely in the same meaning as
he did his favourite malediction); " Bless you!
I could tell you stories by the yard! Ay, sir!
and stories that would take your wind away,
sir; and, sir, about some of the—ve-ry—first—
families in the country," added he, stooping
forward, and speaking slow; " the very first. Ay,
sir, and some of your fine high women," he
continued, glowing at the recollection of some

neglect, " who now give themselves airs; I could
have them at my knees, crying, 'For God's sake,
don't, expose us! Dammy, colonel, don't!"

"Did you ever," said Sir John, a little impatient
at the colonel's reminiscences, "fall in with
a person called Fermor?"

"Fermor? Fermor?" said the colonel, searching
his memory. "Ah, to be sure! I suppose
I didn't know Lady Laura—a fine spanking
creature she was! I could tell you some of her
games. By the Lord, sir, the night of the fresco
business down at the what-d'ye-call-'em villa on
the Thames, and we had the walks lit up,
excepting the arbour, which was forgotten, dammy,
sir, if I didn't  —"

Major Carter here nervously interposed, "Our
friend, Sir John, is connected, I believe—"

"No, no," said Sir John, hotly "I have
nothing to say to them. And I don't care what
is said of them. There was a story, Colonel
Foley, some thirty years ago—as a club man
you knew it, we all knew it; I should know
it myself, but somehow my memory does not
help me now. I want to find that story. You
remember a scampish fellow they had among
them, Fermor's brother, that went to the
dogs?"

"All! you're right, you're right," said Colonel
Foley, with great enjoyment. " Ah, Jack Fermor
I knew him, sir!  I once lent him ten
pounds, and dammy, sir, if I wasnt "the only
man he ever paid—"

"But what was the business?" asked Sir
John, impatiently; "it was cushioned in some
wonderful way."

"Bless your soul," said the colonel, with
the same absence of spiritual meaning, "that
was her, all her! She managed the whole of
it. She had the spirit of ten men. Did you
ever  know that she went over herself, and
settled it all?"

"Ah!" said Sir John, with great interest,
"that was the way it never got out."

"Exactly, sir. It was the middle of winter,
too, with ice, sir, as thick as that book, sir,"
pointing to a London Directory. "And, up-on
my soul, sir, she was expecting to be confined of
her first child. That I know. And I call that
a fine, plucky, spanking thing of her. As for the
quiet sneak Fermor she married, he wasn't fit to
sweep that crossing, sir."

"He was a poor creature," said Sir John,
cordially.

"She settled the whole business, sir. Saw the
counsel, police, judges, every man Jack of them,
talked to them, bought them—seventeen and
sixpence went a long way then in those foreigneering
courts—and brought off her man! What was
better, sir, not a soul could make out what it was
all about."

"Precisely," said Sir John, " I never could
get at it."

"That was her, you see," said the colonel.
"If I didn't admire her for it! I was one of
the few that knew about the business, and dammy