There was a good deal of this following upon the episode of the necklace, and it must be told with regret that our young hero fell into certain exploits which were by no means creditable to him. More than one good-humoured policeman had helped him home to his lodgings; but alas, on Christmas Eve, he fell into the hands of some guardian of the peace who was not quite sufficiently good-natured, and Tom passed the night and the greater part of the following morning, recumbent, he in one cell, and his friend Faddle in the next, with an intimation that they would certainly be taken before a magistrate on the day after Christmas Day. Oh, Ayala! Ayala! It must be acknowledged that you were in a measure responsible;--and not only for the lamentable condition of your lover, but also of that of his friend. For, in his softer moments, Tom had told every thing to Faddle, and Faddle had declared that he would be true to the death to a friend suffering such unmerited misfortune. Perhaps the fidelity of Faddle may have owed something to the fact that Tom's pecuniary allowances were more generous than those accorded to himself. To Ayala must be attributed the occurrence of these misfortunes. But Tom in his more fiery moments,--those moments which would come between the subsidence of actual sobriety and the commencement of intoxication,--attributed all his misfortunes to the Colonel. "Faddle," he would say in these moments, "of course I know that I'm a ruined man. Of course I'm aware that all this is only a prelude to some ignominious end. I have not sunk to this kind of thing without feeling it." "You'll be right enough some day, old fellow," Faddle would reply. "I shall live to be godfather to the first boy." "Never, Faddle!" Tom replied. "All those hopes have vanished. You'll never live to see any child of mine. And I know well where to look for my enemy. Stubbs indeed! I'll Stubbs him. If I can only live to be revenged on that traitor then I shall die contented. Though he shot me through the heart, I should die contented."