‘It’s your eye that’s not level, Freddy, my boy,’ said his youthful opponent; ‘and your cue too. Look out what you’re doing.’ ‘D--n it! it isn’t. Where’s the cha-alk? It’s my beastly luck,’ roared Spenceley, against whom the balls had broken most unfavourably the whole evening. Had the fellow been in the least intoxicated, Myles would have retired; but he was merely noisy and ill-tempered, and accordingly the workman chose that moment to step forward and touch Mr. Spenceley on the shoulder. With a violent start, which contrasted somewhat curiously with his previous bluster, he turned; and when he saw Myles, his face assumed a deep hue of anger, and perhaps of some less noble feeling. ‘I want a word with you,’ said Myles, curtly; and young Saunders paused to stare at the new-comer, while the marker turned and looked on too. Be it observed that neither of these men loved Frederick Spenceley. A billiard-marker, however, is not always in a position to resent affronts, and Charlie Saunders was a person of less importance than Spenceley, whatever might be his private opinion of him. Moreover, the whole proceeding took them by surprise, or--perhaps they might have interfered. ‘If you like to come to another room, where we can be alone,’ pursued Myles, composedly, ‘lead the way. I don’t care where it is.’ ‘What the ---- do you want, you ----?’ growled Spenceley, recovering his pluck, or what he was pleased to consider his pluck. ‘I think you remember me. I don’t need to introduce myself,’ said Myles. ‘Now look here! You’ve been behaving like a blackguard again--perhaps you can’t help that--but, in any case, you’ll be pleased to take your attentions to some other quarter than that one. You know what I mean.’ ‘I’ll be--’ (a volley of the dash dialect)--‘if I do, you fool! Be off, and don’t annoy gentlemen. Clear out, I say, or I’ll call the waiter, and have you kicked out.’ There was that in Myles’s face, so far removed from brutal violence, which was conspicuous in every word and gesture of Spenceley, that the others were quiescent. How he had got there was a mystery to them; but being there, they were Englishmen enough to wish for fair play, and had sufficient sense to perceive that the workman was no blackguard, whatever his interlocutor might be. ‘You were in Markham’s Lane, to-night,’ went on Myles composedly, though his face had become white, and his lips were set. ‘What’s that to you? What business have you to come spying on gentlemen?’ ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t say too much about spying. You know what happened there--in Markham’s Lane I mean. If anything like it happens again--just once again----’ He paused. ‘Well?’ said Spenceley, with a sneer and a taunt, ‘what will be the consequences, my fine fellow?’ ‘They will be unpleasant to you, for I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life.’ ‘Ha! ha! _ha_!’ roared Mr. Spenceley, but somehow there was a false note in the full chord: it failed of rounded complete harmony.