"You have only to go home, and wait. I have a friend who is on his way at this moment to St. Petersburg. I shall telegraph to him to-morrow, to keep his eye on Sûr Imar. He will have no trouble about that, the man being so conspicuous. I shall know when Imar thinks of leaving, and then we must look sharp indeed. You want to save him; so do I. And more than that, to blow to pieces the plans of this vile Hafer. He has treated me infamously; I will not bother you with that now. He little knows what Bat Strogue is. I might have starved, but for Jemmy Nickols. Just for the present I am in cash; but money never sticks to me. If the sinews of war fail, I shall not scruple to ask your help, though I know that you are not a millionaire, George Cranleigh. But I am a man of honour, sir. Though not a swell, I am no sponge. And I have some chance of a good windfall which is keeping me in London now. 'Never say die,' is my motto, sir; and if I get what I ought, I will lend you a hundred pounds as soon as look at you. Strogue is of Yorkshire family, sir, and a Yorkshireman always does what he says. But that Hafer is a cur, as mean a cur, and as fierce a cur, as was ever begotten by Cerberus. He made a scoundrel rob me of five hundred pounds, by false cards; as I found out just too late, and they split the swag between them. A burglar is a trump in comparison with them; and he has taken out young Petheril instead of me. Cranleigh, do you ask me why? Then I'll tell you in two words; because he can get him cheaper, sir, and because he has got no principle. Strogue must travel like a gentleman, as he is by birth and behaviour, and all that; Strogue maintains his rank, sir. You try to shove him into any skunky corner to save a few copeks in passage-money, and he lets you know--ay, you soon find that out, and you won't forget it in a hurry. But this fellow Petheril, that's his name, he would make any skunk's hole skunkier; and you wouldn't care to touch him with a pair of tongs. And another reason I can tell you too, Petheril doesn't know the little things about that beauty of a Marva, which have come to my ears, though I never saw her. Shows what my reputation is--'Bartholomew Strogue, The World,' would find me from any post-office in it. Though when you send me a hundred-pound note, it would be as well to be more precise. But I am not proud of that; it is a nuisance to me. I open a hundred letters, when I find myself in the humour, and there is not a penny in one of them; but they all want me to do something." Fearing that he was becoming inclined to go off on the rove, as great travellers must, and being in a hurry about Stoneman and Grace, I asked him to say in a few words how Prince Hafer came under his charge in London.