The Fortunes of Nigel Part 17

To satisfy the scruples of the messenger, Lord Glenvarloch opened the casket in his presence, and saw that his small stock of money, with two or three valuable papers which it contained, and particularly the original sign-manual which the king had granted in his favour, were in the same order in which he had left them. At the man's further instance, he availed himself of the writing materials which were in the casket, in order to send a line to Master Lowestoffe, declaring that his property had reached him in safety. He added some grateful acknowledgments for Lowestoffe's services, and, just as he was sealing and delivering his billet to the messenger, his aged landlord entered the apartment. His threadbare suit of black clothes was now somewhat better arranged than they had been in the dishabille of his first appearance, and his nerves and intellects seemed to be less fluttered; for, without much coughing or hesitation, he invited Nigel to partake of a morning draught of wholesome single ale, which he brought in a large leathern tankard, or black-jack, carried in the one hand, while the other stirred it round with a sprig of rosemary, to give it, as the old man said, a flavour.

Nigel declined the courteous proffer, and intimated by his manner, while he did so, that he desired no intrusion on the privacy of his own apartment; which, indeed, he was the more ent.i.tled to maintain, considering the cold reception he had that morning met with when straying from its precincts into those of his landlord. But the open casket contained matter, or rather metal, so attractive to old Trapbois, that he remained fixed, like a setting-dog at a dead point, his nose advanced, and one hand expanded like the lifted forepaw, by which that sagacious quadruped sometimes indicates that it is a hare which he has in the wind. Nigel was about to break the charm which had thus arrested old Trapbois, by shutting the lid of the casket, when his attention was withdrawn from him by the question of the messenger, who, holding out the letter, asked whether he was to leave it at Mr. Lowestoffe's chambers in the Temple, or carry it to the Marshalsea?

"The Marshalsea?" repeated Lord Glenvarloch; "what of the Marshalsea?"

"Why, sir," said the man, "the poor gentleman is laid up there in lavender, because, they say, his own kind heart led him to scald his fingers with another man's broth."

Nigel hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed back the letter, broke the seal, joined to the contents his earnest entreaty that he might be instantly acquainted with the cause of his confinement, and added, that, if it arose out of his own unhappy affair, it would be of a brief duration, since he had, even before hearing of a reason which so peremptorily demanded that he should surrender himself, adopted the resolution to do so, as the manliest and most proper course which his ill fortune and imprudence had left in his own power. He therefore conjured Mr. Lowestoffe to have no delicacy upon this score, but, since his surrender was what he had determined upon as a sacrifice due to his own character, that he would have the frankness to mention in what manner it could be best arranged, so as to extricate him, Lowestoffe, from the restraint to which the writer could not but fear his friend had been subjected, on account of the generous interest which he had taken in his concerns. The letter concluded, that the writer would suffer twenty-four hours to elapse in expectation of hearing from him, and, at the end of that period, was determined to put his purpose in execution. He delivered the billet to the messenger, and, enforcing his request with a piece of money, urged him, without a moment's delay, to convey it to the hands of Master Lowestoffe.

"I--I--I--will carry it to him myself," said the old usurer, "for half the consideration."

The man who heard this attempt to take his duty and perquisites over his head, lost no time in pocketing the money, and departed on his errand as fast as he could.

"Master Trapbois," said Nigel, addressing the old man somewhat impatiently, "had you any particular commands for me?"

"I--I--came to see if you rested well," answered the old man; "and--if I could do anything to serve you, on any consideration."

"Sir, I thank you," said Lord Glenvarloch--I thank you;" and, ere he could say more, a heavy footstep was heard on the stair.

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed the old man, starting up--"Why, Dorothy--char- woman--why, daughter,--draw bolt, I say, housewives--the door hath been left a-latch!"

The door of the chamber opened wide, and in strutted the portly bulk of the military hero whom Nigel had on the preceding evening in vain endeavoured to recognise.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SWASH-BUCKLER. Bilboe's the word-- PIERROT. It hath been spoke too often, The spell hath lost its charm--I tell thee, friend, The meanest cur that trots the street, will turn, And snarl against your proffer'd bastinado. SWASH-BUCKLER. 'Tis art shall do it, then--I will dose the mongrels-- Or, in plain terms, I'll use the private knife 'Stead of the brandish'd falchion. Old Play.

The n.o.ble Captain Colepepper or Peppercull, for he was known by both these names, and some others besides; had a martial and a swas.h.i.+ng exterior, which, on the present occasion, was rendered yet more peculiar, by a patch covering his left eye and a part of the cheek. The sleeves of his thickset velvet jerkin were polished and shone with grease,--his buff gloves had huge tops, which reached almost to the elbow; his sword-belt of the same materials extended its breadth from his haunchbone to his small ribs, and supported on the one side his large black-hilted back-sword, on the other a dagger of like proportions He paid his compliments to Nigel with that air of predetermined effrontery, which announces that it will not be repelled by any coldness of reception, asked Trapbois how he did, by the familiar t.i.tle of old Peter Pillory, and then, seizing upon the black- jack, emptied it off at a draught, to the health of the last and youngest freeman of Alsatia, the n.o.ble and loving master Nigel Grahame.

When he had set down the empty pitcher and drawn his breath, he began to criticise the liquor which it had lately contained.--"Sufficient single beer, old Pillory--and, as I take it, brewed at the rate of a nutsh.e.l.l of malt to a b.u.t.t of Thames--as dead as a corpse, too, and yet it went hissing down my throat--bubbling, by Jove, like water upon hot iron.--You left us early, n.o.ble Master Grahame, but, good faith, we had a carouse to your honour--we heard b.u.t.t ring hollow ere we parted; we were as loving as inkle-weavers--we fought, too, to finish off the gawdy. I bear some marks of the parson about me, you see--a note of the sermon or so, which should have been addressed to my ear, but missed its mark, and reached my left eye. The man of G.o.d bears my sign-manual too, but the Duke made us friends again, and it cost me more sack than I could carry, and all the Rhenish to boot, to pledge the seer in the way of love and reconciliation--But, Caracco! 'tis a vile old canting slave for all that, whom I will one day beat out of his devil's livery into all the colours of the rainbow.--Basta!--Said I well, old Trapbois? Where is thy daughter, man?--what says she to my suit?--'tis an honest one--wilt have a soldier for thy son-in-law, old Pillory, to mingle the soul of martial honour with thy thieving, miching, petty-larceny blood, as men put bold brandy into muddy ale?"

"My daughter receives not company so early, n.o.ble captain," said the usurer, and concluded his speech with a dry, emphatical "ugh, ugh."

"What, upon no con-si-de-ra-ti-on?" said the captain; and wherefore not, old Truepenny? she has not much time to lose in driving her bargain, methinks."

"Captain," said Trapbois, "I was upon some little business with our n.o.ble friend here, Master Nigel Green--ugh, ugh, ugh--"

"And you would have me gone, I warrant you?" answered the bully; "but patience, old Pillory, thine hour is not yet come, man--You see," he said, pointing to the casket, "that n.o.ble Master Grahame, whom you call Green, has got the decuses and the smelt."

Which you would willingly rid him of, ha! ha!--ugh, ugh," answered the usurer, "if you knew how--but, lack-a-day! thou art one of those that come out for wool, and art sure to go home shorn. Why now, but that I am sworn against laying of wagers, I would risk some consideration that this honest guest of mine sends thee home penniless, if thou darest venture with him--ugh, ugh--at any game which gentlemen play at."

"Marry, thou hast me on the hip there, thou old miserly cony-catcher!" answered the captain, taking a bale of dice from the sleeve of his coat; "I must always keep company with these d.a.m.nable doctors, and they have made me every baby's cully, and purged my purse into an atrophy; but never mind, it pa.s.ses the time as well as aught else--How say you, Master Grahame?"

The fellow paused; but even the extremity of his impudence could scarcely hardly withstand the cold look of utter contempt with which Nigel received his proposal, returning it with a simple, "I only play where I know my company, and never in the morning."

"Cards may be more agreeable," said Captain Colepepper; "and, for knowing your company, here is honest old Pillory will tell you Jack Colepepper plays as truly on the square as e'er a man that trowled a die--Men talk of high and low dice, Fulhams and bristles, topping, knapping, slurring, stabbing, and a hundred ways of rooking besides; but broil me like a rasher of bacon, if I could ever learn the trick on 'em!"

"You have got the vocabulary perfect, sir, at the least," said Nigel, in the same cold tone.

"Yes, by mine honour have I," returned the Hector; "they are phrases that a gentleman learns about town.--But perhaps you would like a set at tennis, or a game at balloon--we have an indifferent good court hard by here, and a set of as gentleman-like blades as ever banged leather against brick and mortar."

"I beg to be excused at present," said Lord Glenvarloch; "and to be plain, among the valuable privileges your society has conferred on me, I hope I may reckon that of being private in my own apartment when I have a mind."

"Your humble servant, sir," said the captain; "and I thank you for your civility--Jack Colepepper can have enough of company, and thrusts himself on no one.--But perhaps you will like to make a match at skittles?"

"I am by no means that way disposed," replied the young n.o.bleman, "Or to leap a flea--run a snail--match a wherry, eh?"

"No--I will do none of these," answered Nigel.

Here the old man, who had been watching with his little peery eyes, pulled the bulky Hector by the skirt, and whispered, "Do not vapour him the huff, it will not pa.s.s--let the trout play, he will rise to the hook presently."

But the bully, confiding in his own strength, and probably mistaking for timidity the patient scorn with which Nigel received his proposals, incited also by the open casket, began to a.s.sume a louder and more threatening tone. He drew himself up, bent his brows, a.s.sumed a look of professional ferocity, and continued, "In Alsatia, look ye, a man must be neighbourly and companionable. Zouns! sir, we would slit any nose that was turned up at us honest fellows.--Ay, sir, we would slit it up to the gristle, though it had smelt nothing all its life but musk, ambergris, and court-scented water.--Rabbit me, I am a soldier, and care no more for a lord than a lamplighter!"

"Are you seeking a quarrel, sir?" said Nigel, calmly, having in truth no desire to engage himself in a discreditable broil in such a place, and with such a character.

"Quarrel, sir?" said the captain; "I am not seeking a quarrel, though I care not how soon I find one. Only I wish you to understand you must be neighbourly, that's all. What if we should go over the water to the garden, and see a bull hanked this fine morning--'sdeath, will you do nothing?"

"Something I am strangely tempted to do at this moment," said Nigel.

"Videlicet," said Colepepper, with a swaggering air, "let us hear the temptation."

"I am tempted to throw you headlong from the window, unless you presently make the best of your way down stairs."

"Throw me from the window?--h.e.l.l and furies!" exclaimed the captain; "I have confronted twenty crooked sabres at Buda with my single rapier, and shall a chitty-faced, beggarly Scots lordling, speak of me and a window in the same breath?--Stand off, old Pillory, let me make Scotch collops of him--he dies the death!"

"For the love of Heaven, gentlemen," exclaimed the old miser, throwing himself between them, "do not break the peace on any consideration! n.o.ble guest, forbear the captain--he is a very Hector of Troy--Trusty Hector, forbear my guest, he is like to prove a very Achilles-ugh-ugh- ---"

Here he was interrupted by his asthma, but, nevertheless, continued to interpose his person between Colepepper (who had unsheathed his whinyard, and was making vain pa.s.ses at his antagonist) and Nigel, who had stepped back to take his sword, and now held it undrawn in his left hand.

"Make an end of this foolery, you scoundrel!" said Nigel--"Do you come hither to vent your noisy oaths and your bottled-up valour on me? You seem to know me, and I am half ashamed to say I have at length been able to recollect you--remember the garden behind the ordinary,--you dastardly ruffian, and the speed with which fifty men saw you run from a drawn sword.--Get you gone, sir, and do not put me to the vile labour of cudgelling such a cowardly rascal down stairs."

The bully's countenance grew dark as night at this unexpected recognition; for he had undoubtedly thought himself secure in his change of dress, and his black patch, from being discovered by a person who had seen him but once. He set his teeth, clenched his hands, and it seemed as if he was seeking for a moment's courage to fly upon his antagonist. But his heart failed, he sheathed his sword, turned his back in gloomy silence, and spoke not until he reached the door, when, turning round, he said, with a deep oath, "If I be not avenged of you for this insolence ere many days go by, I would the gallows had my body and the devil my spirit!"

So saying, and with a look where determined spite and malice made his features savagely fierce, though they could not overcome his fear, he turned and left the house. Nigel followed him as far as the gallery at the head of the staircase, with the purpose of seeing him depart, and ere he returned was met by Mistress Martha Trapbois, whom the noise of the quarrel had summoned from her own apartment. He could not resist saying to her in his natural displeasure--"I would, madam, you could teach your father and his friends the lesson which you had the goodness to bestow on me this morning, and prevail on them to leave me the unmolested privacy of my own apartment."

"If you came hither for quiet or retirement, young man," answered she, "you have been advised to an evil retreat. You might seek mercy in the Star-Chamber, or holiness in h.e.l.l, with better success than quiet in Alsatia. But my father shall trouble you no longer."

So saying, she entered the apartment, and, fixing her eyes on the casket, she said with emphasis--"If you display such a loadstone, it will draw many a steel knife to your throat."

While Nigel hastily shut the casket, she addressed her father, upbraiding him, with small reverence, for keeping company with the cowardly, hectoring, murdering villain, John Colepepper.

"Ay, ay, child," said the old man, with the cunning leer which intimated perfect satisfaction with his own superior address--"I know- -I know--ugh--but I'll crossbite him--I know them all, and I can manage them--ay, ay--I have the trick on't--ugh-ugh."

"You manage, father!" said the austere damsel; "you will manage to have your throat cut, and that ere long. You cannot hide from them your gains and your gold as formerly."

"My gains, wench? my gold?" said the usurer; "alack-a-day, few of these and hard got--few and hard got."

"This will not serve you, father, any longer," said she, "and had not served you thus long, but that Bully Colepepper had contrived a cheaper way of plundering your house, even by means of my miserable self.--But why do I speak to him of all this," she said, checking herself, and shrugging her shoulders with an expression of pity which did not fall much short of scorn. "He hears me not--he thinks not of me.--Is it not strange that the love of gathering gold should survive the care to preserve both property and life?"

"Your father," said Lord Glenvarloch, who could not help respecting the strong sense and feeling shown by this poor woman, even amidst all her rudeness and severity, "your father seems to have his faculties sufficiently alert when he is in the exercise of his ordinary pursuits and functions. I wonder he is not sensible of the weight of your arguments."

"Nature made him a man senseless of danger, and that insensibility is the best thing I have derived from him," said she; "age has left him shrewdness enough to tread his old beaten paths, but not to seek new courses. The old blind horse will long continue to go its rounds in the mill, when it would stumble in the open meadow."

"Daughter!--why, wench--why, housewife!" said the old man, awakening out of some dream, in which he had been sneering and chuckling in imagination, probably over a successful piece of roguery,--"go to chamber, wench--go to chamber--draw bolts and chain--look sharp to door--let none in or out but wors.h.i.+pful Master Grahame--I must take my cloak, and go to Duke Hildebrod--ay, ay, time has been, my own warrant was enough; but the lower we lie, the more are we under the wind."

And, with his wonted chorus of muttering and coughing, the old man left the apartment. His daughter stood for a moment looking after him, with her usual expression of discontent and sorrow.

"You ought to persuade your father," said Nigel, "to leave this evil neighbourhood, if you are in reality apprehensive for his safety."

"He would be safe in no other quarter," said the daughter; "I would rather the old man were dead than publicly dishonoured. In other quarters he would be pelted and pursued, like an owl which ventures into suns.h.i.+ne. Here he was safe, while his comrades could avail themselves of his talents; he is now squeezed and fleeced by them on every pretence. They consider him as a vessel on the strand, from which each may s.n.a.t.c.h a prey; and the very jealousy which they entertain respecting him as a common property, may perhaps induce them to guard him from more private and daring a.s.saults."

"Still, methinks, you ought to leave this place," answered Nigel, "since you might find a safe retreat in some distant country."

"In Scotland, doubtless," said she, looking at him with a sharp and suspicious eye, "and enrich strangers with our rescued wealth--Ha! young man?"

"Madam, if you knew me," said Lord Glenvarloch, "you would spare the suspicion implied in your words."

"Who shall a.s.sure me of that?" said Martha, sharply. "They say you are a brawler and a gamester, and I know how far these are to be trusted by the unhappy."

"They do me wrong, by Heaven!" said Lord Glenvarloch.

"It may be so," said Martha; "I am little interested in the degree of your vice or your folly; but it is plain, that the one or the other has conducted you hither, and that your best hope of peace, safety, and happiness, is to be gone, with the least possible delay, from a place which is always a sty for swine, and often a shambles." So saying, she left the apartment.

There was something in the ungracious manner of this female, amounting almost to contempt of him she spoke to--an indignity to which Glenvarloch, notwithstanding his poverty, had not as yet been personally exposed, and which, therefore, gave him a transitory feeling of painful surprise. Neither did the dark hints which Martha threw out concerning the danger of his place of refuge, sound by any means agreeably to his ears. The bravest man, placed in a situation in which he is surrounded by suspicious persons, and removed from all counsel and a.s.sistance, except those afforded by a valiant heart and a strong arm, experiences a sinking of the spirit, a consciousness of abandonment, which for a moment chills his blood, and depresses his natural gallantry of disposition.

But, if sad reflections arose in Nigel's mind, he had not time to indulge them; and, if he saw little prospect of finding friends in Alsatia, he found that he was not likely to be solitary for lack of visitors.

He had scarcely paced his apartment for ten minutes, endeavouring to arrange his ideas on the course which he was to pursue on quitting Alsatia, when he was interrupted by the Sovereign of the quarter, the great Duke Hildebrod himself, before whose approach the bolts and chains of the miser's dwelling fell, or withdrew, as of their own accord; and both the folding leaves of the door were opened, that he might roll himself into the house like a huge b.u.t.t of liquor, a vessel to which he bore a considerable outward resemblance, both in size, shape, complexion, and contents."

"Good-morrow to your lords.h.i.+p," said the greasy puncheon, c.o.c.king his single eye, and rolling it upon Nigel with a singular expression of familiar impudence; whilst his grim bull-dog, which was close at his heels, made a kind of gurgling in his throat, as if saluting, in similar fas.h.i.+on, a starved cat, the only living thing in Trapbois' house which we have not yet enumerated, and which had flown up to the top of the tester, where she stood clutching and grinning at the mastiff, whose greeting she accepted with as much good-will as Nigel bestowed on that of the dog's master.

"Peace, Belzie!--D--n thee, peace!" said Duke Hildebrod. "Beasts and fools will be meddling, my lord."

"I thought, sir," answered Nigel, with as much haughtiness as was consistent with the cool distance which he desired to preserve, "I thought I had told you, my name at present was Nigel Grahame."

His eminence of Whitefriars on this burst out into a loud, chuckling, impudent laugh, repeating the word, till his voice was almost inarticulate,--"Niggle Green--Niggle Green--Niggle Green!--why, my lord, you would be queered in the drinking of a penny pot of Malmsey, if you cry before you are touched. Why, you have told me the secret even now, had I not had a shrewd guess of it before. Why, Master Nigel, since that is the word, I only called you my lord, because we made you a peer of Alsatia last night, when the sack was predominant.

--How you look now!--Ha! ha! ha!"

Nigel, indeed, conscious that he had unnecessarily betrayed himself, replied hastily,--"he was much obliged to him for the honours conferred, but did not propose to remain in the Sanctuary long enough to enjoy them."

"Why, that may be as you will, an you will walk by wise counsel," answered the ducal porpoise; and, although Nigel remained standing, in hopes to accelerate his guest's departure, he threw himself into one of the old tapestry-backed easy-chairs, which cracked under his weight, and began to call for old Trapbois.

The crone of all work appearing instead of her master, the Duke cursed her for a careless jade, to let a strange gentleman, and a brave guest, go without his morning's draught.

"I never take one, sir," said Glenvarloch.

"Time to begin--time to begin," answered the Duke.--"Here, you old refuse of Sathan, go to our palace, and fetch Lord Green's morning draught. Let us see--what shall it be, my lord?--a humming double pot of ale, with a roasted crab dancing in it like a wherry above bridge?- -or, hum--ay, young men are sweet-toothed--a quart of burnt sack, with sugar and spice?--good against the fogs. Or, what say you to sipping a gill of right distilled waters? Come, we will have them all, and you shall take your choice.--Here, you Jezebel, let Tim send the ale, and the sack, and the nipperkin of double-distilled, with a bit of diet- loaf, or some such trinket, and score it to the new comer."

Glenvarloch, bethinking himself that it might be as well to endure this fellow's insolence for a brief season, as to get into farther discreditable quarrels, suffered him to take his own way, without interruption, only observing, "You make yourself at home, sir, in my apartment; but, for the time, you may use your pleasure. Meanwhile, I would fain know what has procured me the honour of this unexpected visit?"

"You shall know that when old Deb has brought the liquor--I never speak of business dry-lipped. Why, how she drumbles--I warrant she stops to take a sip on the road, and then you will think you have had unchristian measure.--In the meanwhile, look at that dog there--look Belzebub in the face, and tell me if you ever saw a sweeter beast-- never flew but at head in his life."

And, after this congenial panegyric, he was proceeding with a tale of a dog and a bull, which threatened to be somewhat of the longest, when he was interrupted by the return of the old crone, and two of his own tapsters, bearing the various kinds of drinkables which he had demanded, and which probably was the only species of interruption he would have endured with equanimity.

When the cups and cans were duly arranged upon the table, and when Deborah, whom the ducal generosity honoured with a penny farthing in the way of gratuity, had withdrawn with her satellites, the worthy potentate, having first slightly invited Lord Glenvarloch to partake of the liquor which he was to pay for, and after having observed, that, excepting three poached eggs, a pint of b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and a cup of clary, he was fasting from every thing but sin, set himself seriously to reinforce the radical moisture. Glenvarloch had seen Scottish lairds and Dutch burgomasters at their potations; but their exploits (though each might be termed a thirsty generation) were nothing to those of Duke Hildebrod, who seemed an absolute sandbed, capable of absorbing any given quant.i.ty of liquid, without being either vivified or overflowed. He drank off the ale to quench a thirst which, as he said, kept him in a fever from morning to night, and night to morning; tippled off the sack to correct the crudity of the ale; sent the spirits after the sack to keep all quiet, and then declared that, probably, he should not taste liquor till _post meridiem_, unless it was in compliment to some especial friend. Finally, he intimated that he was ready to proceed on the business which brought him from home so early, a proposition which Nigel readily received, though he could not help suspecting that the most important purpose of Duke Hildebrod's visit was already transacted.

In this, however, Lord Glenvarloch proved to be mistaken. Hildebrod, before opening what he had to say, made an accurate survey of the apartment, laying, from time to time, his finger on his nose, and winking on Nigel with his single eye, while he opened and shut the doors, lifted the tapestry, which concealed, in one or two places, the dilapidation of time upon the wainscoted walls, peeped into closets, and, finally, looked under the bed, to a.s.sure himself that the coast was clear of listeners and interlopers. He then resumed his seat, and beckoned confidentially to Nigel to draw his chair close to him.

"I am well as I am, Master Hildebrod," replied the young lord, little disposed to encourage the familiarity which the man endeavoured to fix on him; but the undismayed Duke proceeded as follows: "You shall pardon me, my lord--and I now give you the t.i.tle right seriously--if I remind you that our waters may be watched; for though old Trapbois be as deaf as Saint Paul's, yet his daughter has sharp ears, and sharp eyes enough, and it is of them that it is my business to speak."

"Say away, then, sir," said Nigel, edging his chair somewhat closer to the Quicksand, "although I cannot conceive what business I have either with mine host or his daughter."

"We will see that in the twinkling of a quart-pot," answered the gracious Duke; "and first, my lord, you must not think to dance in a net before old Jack Hildebrod, that has thrice your years o'er his head, and was born, like King Richard, with all his eye-teeth ready cut."

"Well, sir, go on," said Nigel.

"Why, then, my lord, I presume to say, that, if you are, as I believe you are, that Lord Glenvarloch whom all the world talk of--the Scotch gallant that has spent all, to a thin cloak and a light purse--be not moved, my lord, it is so noised of you--men call you the sparrow-hawk, who will fly at all--ay, were it in the very Park--Be not moved, my lord."

"I am ashamed, sirrah," replied Glenvarloch, "that you should have power to move me by your insolence--but beware--and, if you indeed guess who I am, consider how long I may be able to endure your tone of insolent familiarity."

"I crave pardon, my lord," said Hildebrod, with a sullen, yet apologetic look; "I meant no harm in speaking my poor mind. I know not what honour there may be in being familiar with your lords.h.i.+p, but I judge there is little safety, for Lowestoffe is laid up in lavender only for having shown you the way into Alsatia; and so, what is to come of those who maintain you when you are here, or whether they will get most honour or most trouble by doing so, I leave with your lords.h.i.+p's better judgment."

"I will bring no one into trouble on my account," said Lord Glenvarloch. "I will leave Whitefriars to-morrow. Nay, by Heaven, I will leave it this day."

"You will have more wit in your anger, I trust," said Duke Hildebrod; "listen first to what I have to say to you, and, if honest Jack Hildebrod puts you not in the way of nicking them all, may he never cast doublets, or dull a greenhorn again! And so, my lord, in plain words, you must wap and win."

"Your words must be still plainer before I can understand them," said Nigel.

"What the devil--a gamester, one who deals with the devil's bones and the doctors, and not understand Pedlar's French! Nay, then, I must speak plain English, and that's the simpleton's tongue."

"Speak, then, sir," said Nigel; "and I pray you be brief, for I have little more time to bestow on you."

"Well, then, my lord, to be brief, as you and the lawyers call it--I understand you have an estate in the north, which changes masters for want of the redeeming ready.--Ay, you start, but you cannot dance in a net before me, as I said before; and so the king runs the frowning humour on you, and the Court vapours you the go-by; and the Prince scowls at you from under his cap; and the favourite serves you out the puckered brow and the cold shoulder; and the favourite's favourite--"

"To go no further, sir," interrupted Nigel, "suppose all this true-- and what follows?"

"What follows?" returned Duke Hildebrod. "Marry, this follows, that you will owe good deed, as well as good will, to him who shall put you in the way to walk with your beaver c.o.c.ked in the presence, as an ye were Earl of Kildare; bully the courtiers; meet the Prince's blighting look with a bold brow; confront the favourite; baffle his deputy, and- -"

"This is all well," said Nigel! "but how is it to be accomplished?"