It was chill October before we found ourselves safe back in New York, en route for England. So long a term of freedom from the Colonel's depredations (as Charles fondly imagined--but I will not anticipate) had done my brother-in-law's health and spirits a world of good; he was so lively and cheerful that he began to fancy his tormentor must have succumbed to yellow fever, then raging in New Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-shelled crabs, Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries, brandy cocktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger, and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver. However that may be, Charles returned to New York in excellent trim; and, dreading in that great city the wiles of his antagonist, he cheerfully accepted the invitation of his brother millionaire, Senator Wrengold of Nevada, to spend a few days before sailing in the Senator's magnificent and newly-finished palace at the upper end of Fifth Avenue. "There, at least, I shall be safe, Sey," he said to me plaintively, with a weary smile. "Wrengold, at any rate, won't try to take me in--except, of course, in the regular way of business." Boss-Nugget Hall (as it is popularly christened) is perhaps the handsomest brown stone mansion in the Richardsonian style on all Fifth Avenue. We spent a delightful week there. The lines had fallen to us in pleasant places. On the night we arrived Wrengold gave a small bachelor party in our honour. He knew Sir Charles was travelling without Lady Vandrift, and rightly judged he would prefer on his first night an informal party, with cards and cigars, instead of being bothered with the charming, but still somewhat hampering addition of female society. The guests that evening were no more than seven, all told, ourselves included--making up, Wrengold said, that perfect number, an octave. He was a nouveau riche himself--the newest of the new--commonly known in exclusive old-fashioned New York society as the Gilded Squatter; for he "struck his reef" no more than ten years ago; and he was therefore doubly anxious, after the American style, to be "just dizzy with culture." In his capacity of Maecenas, he had invited amongst others the latest of English literary arrivals in New York--Mr. Algernon Coleyard, the famous poet, and leader of the Briar-rose school of West-country fiction. "You know him in London, of course?" he observed to Charles, with a smile, as we waited dinner for our guests. "No," Charles answered stolidly. "I have not had that honour. We move, you see, in different circles."