At nine o'clock to the minute the chaise drove up to the door. Mr. Kelly took a stroll along the street to see the coast was clear; Mrs. Barnes was in two minds whether to weep at losing her lodgers, or to smile at their prospects of security, and compromised between her emotions by indulging them alternately; and finally the two friends in burgess dress entered the chaise and drove off. Mr. Wogan thrust his head half out of the window, the better to take his fill of the cool night air, but drew it back something of the suddenest at the corner where Ryder Street debouches into St. James's. 'Sure the man's a spy,' said he, flinging himself back. Parson Kelly leaned cautiously forward, and under an oil-lamp above the porch of a door he saw Captain Montague. The Captain was standing in an indecisive attitude, tapping with his stick upon the pavement and looking up and down the street. 'I doubt it,' returned Kelly. 'I have ever heard he was the most scrupulous gentleman.' 'But he's a Whig. A Whig and a gentleman! But it's a contradiction in terms. Whigging is a nasty insupportable trade, and infects a man like a poison. A Whig is a sort of third sex by itself that combines all the failings of the other two.' However, this time it was evident that Captain Montague had taken no note of Nicholas Wogan. He could not but reflect how it was at this very spot that he had come upon the captain before, and mighty glad he was when the lights of Knightsbridge had sunk behind them, and they were driving betwixt the hedgerows. Then at one spring he jumped to the top of his spirits. 'George, what a night!' cries he. 'Sure I was never designed to live in a house at all, but to be entirely happy under the blue roof-tree of the sky. Put me out on a good road at night and the whole universe converses with me on the most familiar terms. Perhaps it's a bush that throws out a tendril and says, "Smell that, you devil, and good luck to you." Or, maybe it's the stars that wink at me and say, "Here's a world for you, Nick, my little friend. Only wait a moment, and we'll show you a bit of a moon that'll make a poet of you." Then up comes the moon, perhaps, in a crescent like a wisp of fire, and, says she, "It's all very well here, Nicholas, but take my word for it, I can show you as good on the sea and better. For you'll have all this, and the hiss of the water under your lee besides, and the little bubbles dancing on the top." But what troubles you, George?' But Kelly made little or no reply, being sunk in the consideration of some difficulty. For two days he remained closeted with his trouble, and it was not until they had got to Worcester that he discovered it. They changed horses at the 'Dog and Turk' and drove through the town under the Abbey clock. 'It is five minutes to twelve,' said Wogan, looking at the clock. 'Yes,' said Kelly with a sigh, 'the face is very plain to read.' Then he sighed again.