John Gore’s eyes were fixed upon his father. He saw him turn sharply with the look of a man who sees in a mirror the face of an enemy behind his chair. He was on his feet almost instantly, his buxom face pleasant as a glass goblet full of Spanish wine. “Jack, my lad, this is well timed! We are all friends here, or should be. Gentlemen, my son, Captain John Gore, just out of the saddle from Yorkshire. Never mind your boots, boy. You have a hungry look, and a dry look. Pull the bell-rope, Launce, and I’ll thank you. Supper is the song that a man wants to hear after a hard day’s ride.” A boy in a pink velvet coat, and with the grand airs of a lord chamberlain, rose and offered John Gore his chair. The sea-captain bowed to the youngster in turn, though the child’s attitude of condescension was vastly quaint to a man who had dared more adventures in one year than the young fop would meet in a lifetime. “You seem to have left a great many of your friends outside in the cold, gentlemen,” he said, still standing, and looking down the long table; “my father has enough chairs, and more than enough liquor.” His coming had brought a momentary lull with it, and not a few of the gentry at the table were staring with some curiosity at a man who had seen the inside of a Barbary prison. My lord caught his son’s words. “What’s that you are saying, Jack?” “These gentlemen have left some of their friends outside in their coaches. Sir Porteus, sir,” and he bowed to an apoplectic old fellow with a fringe of white hair and a tonsure like a monk’s, “there are people in your carriage. I trust you have not been too modest.” The baronet stared boozily across the table. “People in my coach, sir?” “Certainly. And drinking small-beer when they should be drinking sherry.” John Gore had such a stern and serious way with him at times that casual acquaintances might have set him down as a Puritan, with none of the sly, jesting spirit behind his swarthy and imperturbable face. “I assure you, sir, there were gentlemen seated inside your coach. My father’s house is not so niggardly—” Stephen Gore caught his son’s eye and twinkled. A servant came in at the same opportune moment, having taken fully three minutes to answer the bell. “Here, Jeremy, sirrah, Sir Porteus has left some gentlemen to wait in his coach. Desire them to join us; my table is big enough.” The man stared, and then appeared in a great hurry to go about his master’s business. But my lord hindered him. “Jeremy, you rascal, come here. Pardon me, Porteus”—and my lord assumed his most impressive manner—“perhaps you had better call these friends of yours in to us.” “I should recommend the other gentlemen to do likewise,” said John Gore, gravely; “Sir Porteus is not the only culprit. The more the merrier.”