if she didn't bring me round—round and round
again, sir. Now, is she going on still?"

"What did I tell you, Sir John?" said Major
Carter, in delight. " Is not the colonel pleasant?
We ought to get him to come and fix a day
before he goes back to Dunkirk."

"Ah, yes," said Sir John, eagerly, "the very
thing. You must dine with me, colonel; a little
snug private dinner—only ourselves."

"Dammy," said the colonel, " how gluey I feel.
They swindle us at this place with their infernal
bottles—they don't half fill 'em. Here, waiter,
soda. They keep the worst lot of servants in
the kingdom. Well, where was I? I could talk
this way until midnight. Here, you! bring that
after me to the smoking-room. You don't mind
coming there, eh?"

Sir John was a man of business, and had his
time pretty well filled up. "I tell you what,
colonel," he said, looking at his watch, " dine
with me to-day—you and Carter here—at my
club. A snug little thing. Only ourselves."

"I will, upon my soul," said the colonel, eagerly,
and almost ferociously. "That will be more
like it. Good Lord!" he said, by no means
conscious of any devotional appeal, "what things
I could tell you, if I only could collect my wits.
Talk of old What-his-name's Recollections, I'm
told they're all reading, now! Why, dammy,
I could beat him against a wall story for story.
Why, they're nothing but slops, mere slops, sir!"

CHAPTER XXVIII. COLONEL FOLEY's
REMINISCENCES.

THAT evening, at Sir John's club—the Country
Gentleman's—which, the colonel said, he was
glad to see had none of their " eternally lost"
gewgaw " sugar-stick" stuck over it inside and
out—none of your " sickening theatrical scene-
shifting places—all windows," where you caught
your death of cold, but a snug old-fashioned
place, where all the high-priced papers were
taken in, and where brass buttons and yellow
trousers were familiar to the eye: at this club,
then, in a private room, the three gentlemen had
a pleasant little dinner.

"This is something like," said the colonel.
"I call this a place for a gentleman! Dammy,
I don't want to be stuck up in a plate-glass case,
like a dried fish in a museum, so that the people
in the streets may stare up at you. I don't call
that sort of thing a club. And the stuff they
give you! You might as well put a file down
my throat as the liquor we had to-day." Which
community in the participation of the brandy
was a pardonable delusion on the colonel's part.

He was very amusing, this old colonel. But
some of his stories were frightful. He did not
deal in what he called " slops." Men and women
—widows, virgins, and wives—he slaughtered
wholesale—like the great Human Sacrifices at
Dahomy. Later he came back to the subject of
the morning.

"I never saw such a wild scamp of a creature as
that Fermor. Our wine merchant, indeed,
everybody's wine merchant; and gave capital wine,
I must say. Gave more for nothing than he did
for money. No fellows were entertained better.
That was 'twenty or 'twenty-five. Let me see,
now, which was it, dammy?" and the Peninsular
colonel began to ruminate over this point, for his
old memory, like his old eye, was getting very
dim. " 'Twenty-five it was. I have it now, the
year I got my captaincy (Sergant, who was before
me, was shot in a duel by the Spanish minister's
son). Well, that Fermor soon, as you may
imagine, found the wine business not to answer.
He was so extravagant—nothing could stand him
—and as wild as a hare. Very thick with the
governor, and the governor's wife too—a fine
woman, though—but so stuck up, you know.
Dammy," said the colonel, excited by the memory
of repulse, "there was no going within a mile
of her. Why, I dined there four days in the
week. Well, when I came again, dammy if the
wine business hadn't all broken up; and what do
you suppose my friend was at, eh, now? What
do you say, now ?"

Neither Carter nor Sir John could say; nor, if
they could, would they.

"Why, he had set up a little play; nothing
short of that. Instead of the wine, we got—
you understand—cards and chicken hazard. It
was great fun. He got a lot of money out of
us. He made it pay, sir. But there was always
plenty to eat and drink, too. I never enjoyed
myself so much."

Again the colonel took in sherry, and again the
colonel's cheeks fired out with the suddenness of
the illumination of St. Peter's at Rome.

"Where was I? Well, Jack Fermor went
ahead. There were some businesses took place,
I can tell you. Bless you, I could sit here until
midnight, and be not half done. There was a
good pigeoning—in fact (of course excepting
some old friends like myself), it was all pigeoning.
And it was said, too, there was some
drugging and hocussing. That was the way
young Ascot Price was finished off. They got
five thousand out of him, and he shot himself
next day. O, Jack Fermor, he was a wonderful
scamp! Wonderful!"

There was a tinge of regret in the tone with
which the colonel spoke of his old friend—regret
mingled with admiration at perhaps the general
ill success of such gifts.

"Dammy," said the colonel, apologetically,
"I believe it was a queer state of things from
beginning to end; but, you see, there was
nothing on the surface a gentleman could object
to, and it seemed all quite square. A gentleman
must find some way of filling up his time in a
place like that."

Vice having paid this little act of grateful
homage to Virtue, the colonel went on:

"But if Jack 'was a lad,'" went on the
colonel, " what do you suppose his friend was?
Now, what do you suppose his friend was?" No
one, of course, could say. " We were a queer lot
out at that time, I can tell you. I suppose never