“Well, old lass, I give my davy that I never will. It’s best that I leave fightin’ before fightin’ leaves me.” He screwed up his face as he took a sup from Sir Charles’s brandy flask. “It’s fine liquor, sir, but it gets into my cut lips most cruel. Why, here’s John Cummings of the Friars’ Oak Inn, as I’m a sinner, and seekin’ for a mad doctor, to judge by the look of him!” It was certainly a most singular figure who was approaching us over the moor. With the flushed, dazed face of a man who is just recovering from recent intoxication, the landlord was tearing madly about, his hat gone, and his hair and beard flying in the wind. He ran in little zigzags from one knot of people to another, whilst his peculiar appearance drew a running fire of witticisms as he went, so that he reminded me irresistibly of a snipe skimming along through a line of guns. We saw him stop for an instant by the yellow barouche, and hand something to Sir Lothian Hume. Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ran for us full speed with a note held out at arm’s length. “You’re a nice cove, too, John Cummings,” said Harrison, reproachfully. “Didn’t I tell you not to let a drop pass your lips until you had given your message to Sir Charles?” “I ought to be pole-axed, I ought,” he cried in bitter repentance. “I asked for you, Sir Charles, as I’m a livin’ man, I did, but you weren’t there, and what with bein’ so pleased at gettin’ such odds when I knew Harrison was goin’ to fight, an’ what with the landlord at the George wantin’ me to try his own specials, I let my senses go clean away from me. And now it’s only after the fight is over that I see you, Sir Charles, an’ if you lay that whip over my back, it’s only what I deserve.” But my uncle was paying no attention whatever to the voluble self-reproaches of the landlord. He had opened the note, and was reading it with a slight raising of the eyebrows, which was almost the very highest note in his limited emotional gamut. “What make you of this, nephew?” he asked, handing it to me. This was what I read— “SIR CHARLES TREGELLIS, “For God’s sake, come at once, when this reaches you, to Cliffe Royal, and tarry as little as possible upon the way. You will see me there, and you will hear much which concerns you deeply. I pray you to come as soon as may be; and until then I remain him whom you knew as “JAMES HARRISON.” “Well, nephew?” asked my uncle. “Why, sir, I cannot tell what it may mean.” “Who gave it to you, sirrah?”