"No, Master Robert," said the old woman; "there's no letters, and there's nobody been but Miss Hester Gould, a-wantin' to know when Miss Ellen's comin' home." CHAPTER IV. MR. GUYON'S FRIEND. The astonishment of Mr. Guyon at the liberal treatment which he had received at the hands of his new creditor was by no means feigned. That worthy gentleman, in the course of a long career of impecuniosity, had become acquainted with all the various plans of all the leading discounters of the city of London; knew what he called their "whole bag of tricks;" understood the different ways of getting time or obtaining renewal, according to the various idiosyncrasies of the holders of his stamped paper; and gave to the subject an amount of talent, industry, and attention which, otherwise employed, might have brought him in a very fair income. A very fair income was not a thing to be despised by a gentleman in Mr. Guyon's position, whose actually reliable income was represented by one figure, and that a round one. A sum of five thousand pounds indeed stood in the Consols in Edward Guyon's name; but on that pleasantly-sounding amount was laid a _distringas_, a horrible legal instrument preventing its withdrawal by the said Edward Guyon, while the annual interest, which would at least have kept him in cigars and gloves, found its way into the clutches of Messrs. Sharkey and Maw, attorneys-at-law, who had a few years previously advanced a sufficient sum to free Mr. Guyon from an unpleasant incarceration in the Queen's Bench, leaving him a few pounds over to convey himself to the Newmarket Spring Meeting, whither he proceeded immediately on his release. All that pleasant estate known as Bedingfield, in the county of Cheshire, with its three thousand acres of arable land, its salt- and coal-mines, its since-made railway bit, its punctually-paying tenant, and its various sources of revenue; which belonged to the Honourable Piers Rankley, and which every one thought he would bequeath to his cousin, Edward Guyon, had been left to a distant relative of Piers Rankley's childless dead wife, one Jacob Long, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and originally a hide-dresser in Bermondsey, who under the influence of qualms of conscience agreed to allow his reprobate connection Edward Guyon a sum of a thousand a-year, "at his pleasure." It had been a matter of acute annoyance to Ned Guyon that he had no legal claim or hold on this allowance; so that it was impossible for him to mortgage or anticipate it in any way, save by a three months' acceptance for the amount of the quarterly instalment--less commission and discount--payable on the day that instalment was due; but in reality it enabled him to pay renewal fees, to have occasional ready-money for certain _menus plaisirs_ of his own and little treats for Kate, and to give such an air of respectability as it possessed to that old house in Queen Anne Street, the lease of which, with its