Around Tom are seated grave Royal Academicians, rising gay Associates; writers of other journals besides the _Pall Mall Gazette;_ a barrister maybe, whose name will be famous some day: a hewer of marble perhaps: a surgeon whose patients have not come yet; and one or two men about town who like this queer assembly better than haunts much more splendid. Captain Shandon has been here, and his jokes are preserved in the tradition of the place. Owlet, the philosopher, came once and tried, as his wont is, to lecture; but his metaphysics were beaten down by a storm of banter. Slatter, who gave himself such airs because he wrote in the —— _Review_, tried to air himself at the Haunt, but was choked by the smoke, and silenced by the unanimous pooh-poohing of the assembly. Dick Walker, who rebelled secretly at Sarjent’s authority, once thought to give himself consequence by bringing a young lord from the Blue Posts, but he was so unmercifully “chaffed” by Tom, that even the young lord laughed at him. His lordship has been heard to say he had been taken to a monsus queeah place, queeah set of folks, in a tap somewhere, though he went away quite delighted with Tom’s affability, but he never came again. He could not find the place, probably. You might pass the Haunt in the daytime, and not know it in the least. “I believe,” said Charley Ormond (A.R.A. he was then)—“I believe in the day there’s no such place at all: and when Betsy turns the gas off at the door-lamp as we go away, the whole thing vanishes: the door, the house, the bar, the Haunt, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes and all.” It has vanished: it is to be found no more: neither by night nor by day—unless the ghosts of good fellows still haunt it. As the genial talk and glass go round, and after Clive and his friend have modestly answered the various queries put to them by good old Tom Sarjent, the acknowledged Praeses of the assembly and Sachem of this venerable wigwam, the door opens and another well-known figure is recognised with shouts as it emerges through the smoke. “Bayham, all hail!” says Tom. “Frederick, I am right glad to see thee!” Bayham says he is disturbed in spirit, and calls for a pint of beer to console him. “Hast thou flown far, thou restless bird of night?” asks Father Tom, who loves speaking in blank verses. “I have come from Cursitor Street,” says Bayham, in a low groan. “I have just been to see a poor devil in quod there. Is that you, Pendennis? You know the man—Charles Honeyman.” “What!” cries Clive, starting up. “O my prophetic soul, my uncle!” growls Bayham. “I did not see the young one; but ’tis true.”