Heavily and in silence the two travellers sought an hotel, marched up the stairs side by side, without saying a word to each other, and threw themselves, with a simultaneous groan of fatigue and disappointment, into chairs. This last performance elicited a short, hard laugh from the baronet, now thoroughly out of sorts. "I've been a confounded fool!" cried Sir John--"I'll never forgive myself. Why the deuce don't you come down upon me, Sutherland?--I'm an ass--I'm an idiot--I deserve to be turned out of decent society! Hang me, if I did not mean to be a father to that boy!" The real sincerity and penitence of his tone woke once more all the kindly feelings of the Colonel. "It cannot be helped now," he said with a sigh; "by this time it's providence: and I don't doubt it'll turn out for the best." "Ah, it is easy for you to speak," said Sir John, who perhaps did not quite understand his companion's simple, practical reference to a disposition beyond the power of man; "you are not to blame: to think, with my confounded trifling, I should have let Musgrave's boy throw himself away!" This led the Colonel to soothe his friend, and take the guilt upon himself, a proceeding which the baronet, after a few minutes, did not object to. After a while his spirits rose. He began to be reminded of a vigorous appetite, and to recover the exhaustion of fatigue. With a little assumption of languor on his own part, and a tender regard for the necessities of the Colonel, Sir John took upon himself at last to order dinner. Then the travellers separated, to make their most needful ablutions. When they met again at dinner Sir John was himself again. "After all, Sutherland," he said, "nothing can be more absurd than to disturb ourselves about this, though it is very vexatious. 'Twill do the boy good, after all--nothing I should have liked better at his age; and won't harm his prospects a bit--everybody likes adventurous young men. Here's a health and a famous voyage to the young fellow. I'll take care there's a welcome waiting for him when he lands--for of course every ship that sails the passage will outstrip the transport. To be sure, he's melancholy enough now, I believe. Do him good--teach him to be careful how he runs away from his friends another time. What's the good of breaking our hearts over it?--he'd be just as sea-sick if he were Colonel; and I warrant the 'Prince Regent' gives him quite enough to think of for eight days. What can't be cured, you know--here's good luck to him!--the end of his voyage will make up for it all."