The young smoker, raising her exquisitely-shaped hand, made a slight movement with it in the air. "Leave the room and go to bed!" she said. Miss Welsh left the room and disappeared. When she was left alone Miss Cecilia Jones carefully extinguished her cigarette, putting the unconsumed fragment in a little ash-tray which was fastened to the wall above her head. She replaced the pillows in their former position; under one of them she placed her revolver, on it she placed her head. Touching one of the ivory buttons, which she could easily do from where she lay, instantly the room was dark. In the darkness, having made herself comfortable between the sheets, she set herself to woo sweet sleep. Ninepence! I had gone in to get a glass of ale--into the four-ale bar. The place was pretty full. Scarcely had I begun to absorb my liquid when a gentleman of the nondescript sort, having a remnant of a red handkerchief tied about his neck, favoured me with this inquiry: "If a party what you knew nothink at all about, and never seed afore in all your dyes, was to ask you to lend 'im ninepence, would you lend it 'im?" As I thought it possible that the party in question might be himself, I lost no time whatever in replying, "Certainly not." He turned to a friend with sandy hair and a suit of clothes which, unless he had decreased to half his size since first he had them, must originally have been somebody else's. "That is what I says. Isn't that what I says? I says I wouldn't. No more I wouldn't." The friend tilted his cap over his eyes, and he dug the knuckles of his right hand into the back of his head. I have not the faintest notion why. And he held forth thus: "It was like this here. I was in the bar, yer know, along with some other parties, yer know, as it might be me and you in 'ere, when 'e comes in." "Who come in?" "Why this 'ere bloke. He says to me, 'If this ain't a pretty start, what is?' I says, 'What's up now?' He says, 'Just cast your eyes round me.' And he lifts up the tails of 'is coat--'e 'ad a tail-coat on, leastways it 'ad been a tail-coat once--and 'e says, 'Them's trousers.' I says, 'They don't look it.' 'E says, 'They don't. And that's 'ow I'll lose a fortune.' I says, ''Ow do you make that out?' 'E says, 'I'll tell yer, seeing as 'ow you're a friend.'" "Was 'e a friend of yourn? I thought yer said yer'd never seed 'im afore?"