The crowd of more respectable persons, collected at both sides of the street, began then to disperse, and Van Noost was turning round to walk away with Smeaton, when a sharp tap upon his shoulder made him suddenly pause and look behind him. At the same moment, a calm clear voice, with a somewhat sarcastic tone, addressed him by name, saying-- "Well, my good friend, Van Noost, you have shouted loudly for Harley to-day, which is generous, seeing that he has little chance of paying the obligation." "Paid already, my good lord," replied Van Noost, turning round, not in, the least discomposed, and addressing a thin plainly-dressed man of the middle age. "He bought two nymphs and two dairy maids of toe, no longer ago than this time twelvemonth--size of life--dairymaids with pails upon their heads, nymphs with cornucopias in their hands, to say nothing of a little black boy with a dolphin to be put in the middle of a fountain. Surely I am bound to cry 'Long live the Earl of Oxford!' If your lordship will patronise me in the like manner, and should you chance to get into a scrape so as to win the applause of the mob, I will throw up my hat and roar, 'Long live the Earl of Stair!' with the best of them." "Well, well," replied the Earl, with a smile, "only take care what you are doing, my good friend; for, though being whipped for a libel has often made a bookseller's fortune, yet the being sent to Newgate for sedition would not greatly benefit a leaden figure-maker, I imagine." "I did it on compulsion, noble Lord," replied Van Noost, in an indifferent tone. "I make it a point never to quarrel with a mob; for I am a curious piece of statuary, not so easily mended as one of my own figures; and I don't believe any king on earth would help to mend me if I chanced to get head, or bone, broken by resisting the rabble. Would you not have done the same in my place?" "No," replied the Earl, who seemed for some reason willing to prolong the conversation. "I should have done just as this worthy gentleman who is with you did; kept my hat on, and remained silent. Besides, my good friend, your leanings are well known, although one would have thought that the son of jolly old Van Noost, who came over with King William, would not have inherited a vast store of Jacobitism." "It was my mother's property I came into," replied Van Noost, with a laugh; "for, though my father was a Dutchman, my mother was a thorough Englishwoman, Betsy Hall by name. My father never meddled with politics, good man; but my mother was a staunch Tory, and a wise one; for she always cried when there was anything to be got, and held her tongue when there was no use in crying. But how happens your Lordship to be on foot amongst the rabble?" he continued, moving as if to pass the Earl who was right in his way. "Have you not been down to the House to see these gay doings?" "Not I," replied the Earl of Stair. "My business is to stop intrigues, and not to mix with them."