"The country!" repeated half-a-dozen voices, in tones of surprise and incredulity. "Bellinger in the country! What, in the name of all that is innocent, should take you to the country? You who have never slept a night out of town since you came of age. Think of the risks! You might have caught milk-fever or chicken-pox! We must believe it, my lord, because your lordship says so." "It only shows how little a fellow is missed!" replied Lord Bellinger, not too well pleased to find his absence had been unnoticed by those among whom he considered himself a man of mark. "Did you never hear of my coach being robbed; money and papers carried off; myself, my lady, and my servants made prisoners on _parole_ by a band of gipsies, and a highwayman riding a grey horse? On my honour, gentlemen, I believe not one of you cares a brass farthing for any earthly thing that takes place beyond ten miles from London or two from Newmarket!" He spoke bitterly, and with an energy so unlike his usual careless manner, that the man in the plum-coloured coat gazed at him in undisguised astonishment. "A grey horse!" repeated this nobleman, tapping his snuff-box. "The best-actioned horse I ever saw in my life was a grey, and belonged to a highwayman--a fellow they called Galloping Jack. It must have been the very man!" "Two to one against him!" interrupted a bystander. "Ten guineas to five, my lord, that no gentleman of the road would show such bad taste as to rob Bellinger, or such deplorable ignorance as to suppose his purse was worth taking." "I'll go you halves," said a tall youth. "I remember the grey horse, and the man in the mask who rode him; what became of the horse I never heard, but the man was hanged at Tyburn last November!" In the confusion of tongues created by this statement, offering, as it did, a wide field for speculation, and originating many wagers on the personal identity of the robber in the mask, Bellinger felt an arm thrust under his own to withdraw him from the noisy circle into the recess of a bay-window fronting the street, while a friendly voice whispered in his ear: "Welcome back, my lord. I knew you had left the town, if no one else did. I wish from my soul these gipsies and robbers, and other scoundrels had turned you back before you reached Kensington!" It was Harry St. Leger who spoke, his comrade and associate in many a scene of pleasure and dissipation little removed from vice, yet a staunch friend nevertheless--not to be detached by misfortune, nor daunted by disgrace. Such cases are less rare than those who hold by the laws of ethics might suppose. The growth of the bog-myrtle is fresh and fair, its fibres are tough and clinging, though it takes root in the blackest and miriest of swamps. Harry St. Leger would have offered him his last guinea ungrudgingly, and with no less flippant a jest, than he would have shed his last drop of blood in a duel, to share his friend's quarrel, as principal or second, or anything he pleased.