Jock, and showed that he was in earnest. Be this as it may, how that Laurence Alsager sold out from her Majesty's regiment of Coldstream Guards, and that he was succeeded by Peregrine Wilks (whose grandfather, _par parenthèse_, kept a ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin's Court), is it not written in the chronicles of the _London Gazette?_ Immediately after the business had been settled, Colonel Alsager left England for the Continent. He was heard of at Munich, at Berlin, at Vienna (where he remained for some considerable time), and at Trieste, where all absolute trace of him was lost, though it was believed he had gone off in an Austrian Lloyds' steamer to the Piraeus, and that he intended travelling through Greece, the Holy Land, and Egypt, before he returned home. These were rumours in which only a very few people interested themselves; society has too much to do to take account of the proceedings of its absent members; and after two years had elapsed Laurence Alsager's name was almost forgotten, when, on a dull January morning, two letters from him arrived in Loudon,--one addressed to the steward of the Maecenas ordering a good dinner for two for the next Saturday night at six; the other to the Honourable George Bertram of the Foreign Office, requesting that distinguished public servant to meet his old friend L. A. at the Maecenas, dine with him, and go with him afterwards to the Parthenium Theatre, where a new piece was announced. Honest Mr. Turquand, the club steward, by nature a reticent man, and one immersed in perpetual calculation as to ways and means, gave his orders to the cook, but said never a word to any one else as to the contents of his letter. George Bertram, known among his colleagues at the Foreign Office as "Blab Bertram," from the fact that he never spoke to anybody unless spoken to, and even then seldom answered, was equally silent; so that Colonel Alsager's arrival at the Maecenas was thoroughly unexpected by the members. The trimly-shaved old gentlemen at the various tables stared with wonder, not unmixed with horror, at the long black beard which Alsager had grown during his absence. They thought he was some stranger who had entered the sacred precincts by mistake; some even had a horrible suspicion that it might be a newly-elected man, whose beard had never been mentioned to the committee; and it was not until they heard Laurence's clear ringing voice, and saw his eye light up with the old fire, that they recognized their long-absent friend. Then they crowded round him, and wanted to hear all his two-years' adventures and wanderings told in a breath; but he laughingly shook them off, promising full particulars at a later period; and went over to a small corner-table, which he had been accustomed to select before he went away, and which Mr. Turquand had retained for him, where he was shortly joined by George Bertram.