Over the Water.
The fine passenger boat was ploughing its way across the channel,
receding from Folkestone, gaining on Boulogne-sur-Mer. Sir Simon
Orville and his three nephews were on board. It was a fine, warm, calm
day in August; and as Sir Simon Orville sat on the upper deck, steadily
as he could have sat in one of his own chairs at home, he thought what
a charming passage that was between the two points, and how silly he
had been never to have tried it before.
For—if the truth must be told—Sir Simon Orville had never made but
three water trips in his life: the one to Ramsgate, from London; the
other two, the short crossing to the Isle of Wight. He had called them
all equally "going to sea;" and as it happened that the water had been
very particularly rough on each of the three occasions, and Sir Simon
terribly ill, his reminiscences on the subject were not pleasant. To
find himself, therefore, gliding along as smoothly as if the channel
were a sea of glass, was both unexpected and delightful.
The sky was blue over head; the water was blue underneath; the slight
breeze caused by the motion of the vessel was grateful on the warm day;
and Sir Simon thought he was in Paradise. And now, as they were nearing
the French town, there came gliding towards them the steamer that had
just put off from it; her deck crowded with merry-faced passengers,
congratulating themselves like Sir Simon, at the easy voyage. The
vessels exchanged salutes, and passed, each on her way.
And now the harbour was gained and traversed; the boat was made fast to
the side, and the passengers began to land. The first thing Sir Simon
did on _terra firma_ was to turn himself about and gaze around,
perfectly bewildered with the strange scene and the strange tongue. It
was so new to him: he had never been out of his own country in his
life. Bertie Loftus, who knew something of the place, and prided
himself on his French, consequently felt obliged to speak it as soon as
he landed, drew his uncle to the custom-house through the sea of gazing
faces, and said, "Par ici." That passed, and the egress gained, they
found themselves in the midst of a crowd of touters, shouting out the
names of their respective hotels and thrusting forward cards.
"Hotel du Nord," said Bertie, grandly, waving his hands to keep off the
men, with an air of deprecating condescension.
"But what is it? What do they want? What are these cards?" reiterated
Sir Simon. "My goodness me, boys, what's _that?_"
"That" was a string of the fishwomen in their matelotte costume, dark
cloth short petticoats, red bodies, and broad webbing bracers. They
were harnessed to a heavy truck of luggage, already cleared, and
starting with it to one of the hotels.
"Uncle, we shall never get on if you stay like this," said Bertie.
"That's nothing: the women do all the work here."
Up came four or five more women and surrounded the party, bawling into
Sir Simon's stunned ears with their shrill and shrieking voices,
evidently asking something.
"What on earth are they saying of, Bertie?"
Now Mr. Bertie's French only did for polite table life, and
Anglo-French intercourse. To be set upon by a regular Frenchman with
his perplexing tongue, and (as it seemed) rapid utterance, puzzled
Bertie always: what must it have been then when these fishwomen
attacked him with their broad patois?
"Come along, uncle; they don't want anything. Allez vous en," rather
wrathfully added Bertie to the ladies, which only made them talk the
faster.
"Bertie, I shall not go along: the poor women must want something, and
I should like to know what. What—do—you—want—please?" asked Sir Simon
in his politeness, laying a stress upon each word. "Spake Anglish? No
spake French, me."
Jabber and shriek, jabber and shriek, all the five voices at once, for
there were five of them. Sir Simon put up his hands and looked
helplessly at Bertie; who was feeling rather helpless himself, just
then.
"They are asking if you have any luggage, and if they may carry it to
your hotel, Sir Simon," spoke a free, pleasant voice, evidently on the
burst of laughter. And Sir Simon turned to behold George Paradyne, and
seized his hand in gladness at being relieved from his dilemma.
To hear the boy interpreting between Sir Simon and the women; to note
that his French tongue was ready and fluent as theirs and with rather a
more refined sound in it, was somewhat mortifying to Bertie Loftus. The
women disappeared, George talking fast and laughing after them. "What
brings you here? When did you come?" asked Sir Simon, keeping him by
his side.
"We came yesterday, Sir Simon. I am with the Galls. They kindly invited
me to accompany them. We are at the Hotel du Nord."
"The Galls here, and at the Norde!" almost shouted Sir Simon in his
delight. "I shall have somebody that I can speak English with."
Yes; the Galls had made friends with George Paradyne and brought him to
Boulogne with them. Mrs. Gall, a woman of the kindest and truest
nature, had told her husband, told her son, that she should make the
school ashamed of its prejudice against Paradyne. William Gall had not
accompanied them: he was coming later. Sir Simon had known nothing of
their movements: he had been a week and more from home. The Talbots
were coming; the Browns were coming; Leek and his mother, Lady Sophia,
were already there. As Sir Simon remarked, it seemed like an arranged
party. Such, however, was not the case.
"What a lingo, to be sure!" cried Sir Simon, as he trotted up the hot
and blazing port. "Why, actually those little street urchins are
jabbering French! Halloa! stop!" he added, coming to a sudden halt
opposite the goods' custom-house: "Where's Dick!"
Nobody remembered to have seen Dick since the landing. "He'll turn up,
sir," returned Loftus, slightly annoyed at the unequal progress they
were making. "Dick won't get lost."
Sir Simon did not feel so sure upon the point; he thought he might get
lost himself in that helpless foreign town; becoming, as he was, more
strange and bewildered every moment. But Dick came running up from
behind, dragging with him a tall, square-built man with a thoughtful
face and grey hair. Sir Simon nearly shook his hands off, for it was
Mr. Gall.
"What a mercy!" said he. "I never was so glad in all my life; did not
know anything of your coming. We have been a week at Chatham, staying
near my poor brother Joe, the hop-dealer, who made that sad failure of
it. You know him, Gall. I wanted to see how he and the wife and chicks
were of, poor things, and we put up at an inn there."
Dick shook hands with Paradyne. Dick listened to the news that Onions
was in the town, and that Talbot was arriving, with a sort of rapture:
the Browns too, major and minor. Dick would have stood on his head had
there been room on the port to do it.
A few days more, and the different friends and schoolmates had
collected there. It was indeed as if they had premeditated the
gathering. Some went grandly _viâ_ Folkestone, some more economically
by the boat from London: that little muff, Stiggings, who was fond of
writing to Miss Rose, made the trip in a sailing vessel, invited to it
by the captain; he was awfully sick all the way, and landed more dead
than alive. The Galls and Sir Simon's party were at the Hotel du Nord;
the Talbots had small lodgings in the Rue Neuve Chaussée; the Browns
took a furnished house in the open country, beyond the Rue Royale; and
Lady Sophia Leek, who had no acquaintance with the rest, and made none
with them, was staying at the Hotel des Bains. And the time went on.
But that Sir Simon Orville was the most unsuspicious of men, he had
undoubtedly not failed to detect that some ill-feeling was rife between
his friend Gall's eldest son, and Bertie Loftus. For three whole days
after William Gall's arrival, they did not exchange a word with each
other; on the fourth, a quarrel, not loud, but bitter, took place on
the sands; and those low, concentrated, bitter quarrels are worse than
loud ones. People, scattered in groups at only a few yards' distance,
did not hear it; but they might have seen the white faces raised on
each other with an angry glare, had they been less occupied with
themselves, with their gossip, with the picking up of shells. Bertie
Loftus was cherishing the remembrance of his insult, and paying it off
fourfold in superciliousness now.
Sir Simon's mind was too agreeably filled to afford leisure for
detecting feelings not on the surface: everything was new to him,
everything delightful. The free and easy life in the French town; the
unceremonious habits; the sociable salon, where they sat with the
windows open to the street; the passing intimacy made with the rest of
the guests; the sufficiently-well-appointed meals in the
dining-room—the lingering breakfast at will, the chance lunch, the
elaborate dinner—were what he had never before met with. Mr. Bertie
Loftus considered it a state of things altogether common; but it was
after the social, simple-minded man's own heart. There was the pier to
walk on; with its commodious seats at the end, whence he could watch
the vessels in at will, and revel in the view of the dancing waves;
there was the laid-out ground before that gay building whose French
name Sir Simon could not pronounce, the établissement, where he could
sit in the sun or the shade, watching the croquet players, and reading
his newspaper between whiles; there was the terrace beyond, with its
benches; there were the sands stretching out in the distance. An upper
terrace also, close at hand, where he could place himself at a small
round table and call for lemonade in the summer's heat. Sir Simon would
be now in one spot, now in another, his _Times_ and telescope in his
hand, his friend Gall not far off. And Mr. Gall was a sensible, shrewd
man, looked up to in the city as the head of a wealthy wholesale
business; he was not despised by his own people, however he might be by
Bertie Loftus. What with the attractions out of doors and the
attractions in, Sir Simon thought Boulogne was pleasant as a fabled
town of enchantment.
"A scandal-loving, vulgar, crowded, disreputable, unsavoury place,
sir!" was the judgment some new acquaintance passed upon it one day, to
the intense approval of Bertie. But Sir Simon shook his head, and could
not see it.
Sir Simon stood at the end of the pier one afternoon, his telescope to
his eye, ranging the horizon for the first appearance of the London
boat. He was looking in the wrong direction for it, but that was all
one to happy Sir Simon. Young Paradyne put him right. By that boat he
was expecting Mr. and Mrs. Loftus. Some business having taken them
unexpectedly to London, Sir Simon had written to say, "Come over here
and be my guests." It suddenly struck him that the sight of the boy by
his side, Paradyne, might call up unpleasant recollections to Mr.
Loftus. Sir Simon had got to like the boy excessively; but that was no
reason why Mr. Loftus should tolerate the intimacy.
On came the good ship, "The City of Paris," pitching and tossing, for
the waves were wild to-day, and Sir Simon felt thankful he was not in
her. She but just saved the tide. Back down the pier he hurried, in
time to see the passengers land; Dick and Raymond Trace crowding
eagerly against the ropes. Dick leaped them, and had to go through the
custom-house for his pains, kissing his mother between whiles. She was
like her brother, Sir Simon, in features; simple once, but a little
pretentious now. The tears ran down Sir Simon's cheeks when he saw that
her hair was grey. Very grey indeed just at present, and her face too,
with the adverse wind on deck, and the sickness. Mr. Loftus—a slender,
aristocratic-looking man of courteous manners, but with a great deal of
Bertie's hauteur in his pale and handsome face—had not suffered, and
was ready to greet all friends in his calm, gentlemanly fashion.
There are many ropes about that part of the port, as perhaps some of
you know. Mr. Loftus, a very near-sighted man, with an eye-glass
dangling, contrived to get his feet entangled in them; he would
undoubtedly have fallen, but that some one darted to the rescue and
held him up. Mr. Loftus saw a stripling nearly as tall as himself, with
a frank, good-looking countenance, and open, bright, grey eyes.
"Thank you, young sir," he said; "I must look to my steps here, I find.
Who is that nice-looking lad?" he subsequently asked of Sir Simon.
"Oh, never mind him," cried Sir Simon, evasively; "let us get on to the
Norde"—as he always called the hotel. "Eliza looks half dead."
"But where's Albert?" inquired Mr. Loftus, who had been gazing about in
vain for his eldest son.
Sir Simon could not tell where he was, and wondered at his absence. He
little thought that Mr. Albert Loftus was detained with Gall, the two
quarrelling desperately, out by Napoleon's column. Things had come to a
most unpleasant pass between them.
Mrs. Loftus went to lie down as soon as they reached the hotel. Mr.
Loftus, declining refreshment until dinner-time, was ready to walk
about with Sir Simon and be shown the lions. That goodhearted and
estimable knight took him to a favourite bench of his on the green
lawn—or plage, if you like to call it so—of the établissement, which
seemed nearly deserted under the blaze of the afternoon sun. The sea
was before them, the harbour on the left, the heights on the right.
Here they sat at their ease, and the conversation fell upon Mr. Trace,
Raymond's father.
"It is nearly a twelvemonth now since Robert Trace wrote to me,"
observed Sir Simon; "I can't make it out. We have never been so long
before without news. Have you heard from him?"
"No," answered Mr. Loftus. "But my not hearing goes for nothing. I
don't suppose we have exchanged letters three times since we separated
in Liverpool four—nearly five—years ago."
"Is there any particular cause for that?" asked Sir Simon.
"Well, I can hardly say there is. We did not agree in opinion about the
winding-up of affairs at that unfortunate time, and I was vexed with
Robert Trace; but we parted good friends."
"He took too much upon himself, I have heard you say."
"Yes. He would carry out his own opinions; would not listen to me, or
let me have a voice; and he did it so quickly too. While I was saying
such a thing ought to be done in such a manner, he _did_ it, and did it
just the reverse. I have always thought that if Robert Trace had
managed properly, we might have gone on again and redeemed ourselves.
The fact is, his usually cool judgment was stunned out of him by the
blow. But it is of no use speculating now on what might have been. How
was he getting on when you last heard?"
"I don't know."
The words were spoken in a peculiarly emphatic tone, and it caused Mr.
Loftus to glance inquiringly at Sir Simon. The latter answered the
look.
"He was at Boston, you know; had got together some sort of an agency
there, and was doing well. In one of his letters to me, he said he was
in the way to make a fortune. Some capitalists, whom he named, were
establishing a great commercial enterprise, a sort of bank I fancy, and
had offered the management of it to him, if he could take shares to the
amount of two thousand pounds, which must be paid up. He could furnish
the one from his own funds, he said, and he asked me to lend him the
other. In less than a twelvemonth it should be repaid to me with
interest."
"And what did you do?"
"Lent it. I was willing to give him another help on to fortune; and
Trace, as you know, was a longheaded fellow, the very last to be
deluded by any trashy bubble not likely to hold water. So I despatched
him the thousand pounds by return mail."
"You were always too liberal, Simon."
"Better be too liberal than too stingy," was the rather impulsive
answer. "I should not like to remember on my death-bed that I had
refused assistance to friends in need, for the sake of hoarding my
gold. What good would it do me then?"
"And how did it prosper him?"
"I don't know. I got an acknowledgment from him of its receipt—just a
line. I believe I can repeat the words, 'Dear Simon, my best thanks to
you for what has now come safe to hand. Will write by next mail.' The
next mail, however, brought me nothing, nor the next, nor the next.
After that came a letter, dated New York; in it he said he had left
Boston, and would give me particulars later. They have never come."
"That's strange. How do you account for it?"
Sir Simon did not answer for a minute. "I think the projected
enterprise failed," he said at length; "and that Robert Trace lost his
own money and mine too. I think he is trying to redeem his position in
a measure before he writes and confesses to the failure. It is no good
reason for maintaining silence; but Robert Trace always was sensitive
on the subject of pecuniary losses, especially of his own. I suppose
the Americans were more clever than he, and took him in, and he does
not like to confess it."
"What are you going to do with Raymond?" questioned Mr. Loftus.
"I don't know. I shall be in a dilemma over it, unless we speedily hear
from his father. Should he gain the Orville prize he will go to the
university; but as to what he is to be—of course it lies with his
father to decide. I propose business to him—any sort he'd like; but he
turns his nose up at it, just as disdainfully as Mr. Bertie could do."
Mr. Loftus smiled. "Bertie wants to read for the Bar but I fear it will
be up-hill work. He—there's the fine lad that saved me from stumbling,"
he broke off, as Paradyne and another shot across the sands. "You did
not tell me who he was. He has a nice face."
"I'll tell you if you like; but your prejudices will rise up in arms
like so many bristles. That's young Paradyne."
"Paradyne! Not Arthur Paradyne's son?"
"It is."
"But what brings him here—with you?" returned Mr. Loftus; his voice
taking a cold, haughty, reserved tone.
"There, I knew how it would be," said Sir Simon, with a short laugh.
Turning round to make sure there were no listeners, he told the
particulars to Mr. Loftus: of George Paradyne's happening to enter
Orville College, of Raymond's discovery, and of the Head Master's
appeal to himself. "The lad is as nice a lad as ever lived," he
concluded, "and why should his father's fault be visited upon him?"
A moment's pause, and Mr. Loftus's better reason asserted itself. He
was of a generous nature when his pride did not stand in the way: or,
as Sir Simon put it, his prejudice.
"Certainly. Yes. I should have said the same, had Dr. Brabazon
consulted me. Let the boy have a chance. But, Simon, how does he get
supported at that expensive college? The widow protested she had but
the merest pittance of an income left."
"I don't know how. Somebody, perhaps, has taken them by the hand: I
can't tell what people of misfortune would do without. I show the boy
kindness, not only because I like him, but that I promised something of
the sort to Mary."
"To Mrs. Trace?" exclaimed Mr. Loftus.
"I did," affirmed Sir Simon, to the evident surprise of his
brother-in-law. "Mary Trace had been a hard, cold woman, as you know;
but the light broke in upon her when she was dying. It changed her
nature—as of course, or it had not been the true, blessed light from
heaven—and she got anxious for others. More than once she spoke to me
of the Paradynes; their fate seemed to lie like a weight upon her. 'If
ever you can lend them a helping hand, Simon, do it,' she urged; 'do it
for our Saviour's sake.' I can see her blue, pinched lips now, and the
anxious fever in her eyes as she spoke," he added dreamily, "and I
promised. But I would help the lad for his own sake, apart from this."
Mr. Loftus made no comment: to confess the truth, he could not quite
understand why Mrs. Trace should have done this. He raised his double
eye-glass.
"Is not that Albert?" he asked. "There, in the distance, with one or
two more young men." And Sir Simon turned his long glass in the
direction to which he pointed.
Close against the water they stood; three of them—Bertie, for he it
was, and Gall, and Leek. The tide was nearly out, and Bertie and Gall
had found their way round the point, from the heights down to the
sands, a long round, wrangling all the way. Had Mr. Loftus and Sir
Simon but possessed an ear-glass as well as an eye-glass, they might
have heard more than was meant for them. That Bertie Loftus was bent
upon aggravating Gall by every means in his power, short of vulgar
blows, was indisputable; each word he spoke was an insult, a derisive
taunt; and Gall, who had rebelled against this kind of treatment from
Bertie, even when it was implied rather than expressed, was nearly
stung into madness.
"Why don't you have it out, and have done with it?" he passionately
cried, stopping short as they came round in view of the établissement
and its frequenters. "If you keep on like this, you'll provoke me to
kick you to ribbons."
Bertie smiled derisively. Kick _him_ to ribbons! His legs were twice as
long as Gall's, if it came to kicking. Not that Bertie would have
played at that. "There's no chance of having it out with _you_," came
the coolly contemptuous answer. "The only way which gentlemen use to
'have things out,' you don't understand. And you can't be expected to."
Leek espied them from a distance and came running up. It was at this
moment that Mr. Loftus's glasses happened to fall upon them.
"Look at him, Onions," cried Bertie, indicating Gall by a sweep of the
hand that was the very essence of insolent scorn. "He is asking me to
go in for a game of kicking."
"I am saying that I'll kick _you_ if you don't stop your row," cried
Gall, his very lips white with passion. "And so I will."
"I never did see two such fellows as you," was Leek's comment. "You
can't meet without insulting each other. What's come to you both?"
Bertie Loftus wheeled round on his heel in the soft sand, and
confronted Gall closely, face nearly touching face. "Look here, here's
a last chance—will you meet me?"
"Meet you?"
"Yes, meet me. Don't pretend to misunderstand. I have my pistols at the
hotel."
"Perhaps you brought them on purpose," said Gall, with an unmistakable
sneer.
"Perhaps I did," coolly avowed Bertie. "Will you make yourself into a
gentleman for once, if you can, and meet me?"
"Why, you don't think I should be such an idiot as to go out to fight a
duel, do you?" wonderingly cried Gall, while Leek burst into a laugh.
"People don't do that now, Mr. Loftus."
"Gentlemen do. Ask Leek: he's one. Of course, you can't be expected to
understand that. Others shelter their cowardice under plea of the
law—of custom—which is so much sneaking meanness. I knew how it would
be, and that's why I said nothing before. Why, if you did agree to meet
me, you'd steal off by dusk, and give notice to the police."
"Loftus, I am no more a coward than you; but I know what's right and
what's wrong."
"Just so. And shelter yourself under the 'right.' Cowards can but be
true to their nature."
Gall lifted his hand as if he would have struck, but let it fall again.
He was by no means so cool in temper as Bertie Loftus; and a cool
temper is sure to win the day in the end. It is of no use to pursue the
quarrel further; the harsh and abusive words interchanged would not
tend to bring edification; but the result was a very deplorable one.
They separated: Bertie going one way with Leek; Gall remaining on the
sands. Mr. Loftus and Sir Simon came forward to meet Bertie, and both
of them thought him singularly pre-occupied.
That evening Leek went into the Rue Neuve Chaussée, to call upon James
Talbot, and took him out in the moonlight. "Come on the pier," he said:
"it will be quiet there, and I want to speak to you. Have you seen
Gall?" he asked, as they walked along.
"No, but I have had a note from him," answered Talbot. "He says in it
he relies upon me to be his friend. I can't make it out."
They went on to the quiet pier and paced it slowly, the bright moon
dyeing the scene with her lovely light. An open-air concert was being
held in the garden estrade, its coloured lamps flickering, its numerous
listeners flirting and promenading. The garish windows of the
ball-rooms flung their light abroad—what a contrast to that pure light
riding in the sky! Away they pressed to the top of the deserted pier,
out of sight and hearing. The tide had turned and was coming in; the
wind was rising; the waves roared and leaped against the end of the
pier. There Leek told his story: that Gall and Loftus were about to
fight, and he had promised to be Loftus's second; Talbot was to perform
that office for Gall. Talbot could not believe his ears.
"Fight—a—duel!" he uttered, in blank astonishment, leaving a pause
between each word. "Surely they'd not be such fools."
"They will, earl."
"Not with my help, then. I'd put the police on the track first."
"It would do no good," returned Leek, shaking his head: "they'd evade
the police. Look here, Shrewsbury, when fellows are determined to go in
for a thing of this sort, be assured they _will_ go in for it, by hook
or by crook. Loftus, it seems, has been bent on it for some time, and
he has so managed to stir up Gall, that I don't know now which is the
more eager for it of the two."
"And suppose either of them should get killed?—or both?" debated the
earl. "I say, Leek, this is an awful thing."
Leek nodded gravely. A little fishing-boat lay alongside the pier in
the harbour, stranded there in attempting to come in when the late tide
was nearly out; she was just getting afloat now, and two men on board
her were making some bustle, talking in loud tones. Leek and Talbot
stood looking down upon her as if attracted to interest; in reality
they were absorbed in their own thoughts.
"I told them it was an awful business," spoke Leek, in answer to the
last remark, "but I might just as well have said it to the wind. Well,
let us talk it over, old fellow. We must be men for once, and do the
best we can."
Talbot held out no longer. And the two paced about, settling
preliminaries, planning and devising. A matter of this nature seemed to
carry them beyond their years; to take them out of young men into old
ones. Returning to Leek's room at the Hotel des Bains, they got out the
pistols, which Loftus had resigned to Leek, and examined them
preparatory to their being loaded later. By some untoward fate, while
the weapons were in their hands, Brown major, making a call on Leek,
burst into the room. Talbot hurried the pistols out of sight, but the
gentlemen were both so confused that Brown could not help suspecting
something extraordinary was in the wind, and said so. In the
irresistible attraction that gossip presents, they imparted the secret
to him. Mr. Brown sat down on Leek's portmanteau, while he digested the
news.
"I'd not have believed it of Gall," he said at length.
"Nor I at one time," returned Talbot. "Loftus has taunted him into it."
Brown major sat nursing his leg, and revolving possibilities. "Suppose
bad comes of this, Shrewsbury?—what about you two?"
"What do you call bad?"
"Why, if they should get shot—killed. You might be taken up and put in
prison."
Of course it was not a pleasant suggestion. "They'll not give it up,"
said Leek, with a rueful look.
"Suppose _you_ gave up, Onions; you and the earl?"
"They'd get other fellows for seconds, and call us cowards."
"I don't like those French prisons," gloomily observed Brown major. "If
once you get in, you never know when you'll get out. We knew a man who
was put in one for ten years."
"What had he done?"
"He owed some money; nothing else. When he had been in about two years,
his friends in England clubbed together and got him out. My father was
one. You should hear what he says of the place. They serve up the soup
in a bucket."
"Nice!" cried Leek.
"_I'd_ not run the risk of getting into one," resumed Brown, who was
evidently of a prudent turn. "They should fight their duel without me,
first. Why, Onions, what would your mother say?"
Onions turned his head quickly towards the door with a somewhat scared
look, as if he feared Lady Sophia might be coming in then.
"All you have to do, Brown, is just to hold your tongue, and respect
the confidence we've given you," returned Leek. "Whatever consequences
come of it, you won't be called upon to answer for them."
"Right, old fellow," cheerfully answered Brown, who was really one of
the last to interfere unpleasantly. "You know I'm safe; I was only
thinking of you two. The thing shall go on without any interruption
from me."
And the thing did go on. As you will find if you read further.
"Somewhere on the heights out beyond Napoleon's column, I think,"
suggested Leek in a whisper to Talbot, as they were separating for the
night. "I'll go with you to pick out a snug spot to-morrow. You'll not
fail us at the last, earl!"
"I'll not fail you, Onions. Good night."