With something like a groan, Gumbo started off, and I turned to Mr. MacRea. "You will find a cup of coffee in your room," I said. "I must attend to this sudden call; but possibly by the time you have washed and changed, I may be free to rejoin you at breakfast, when we can talk at leisure." The young man had caught up his valise, but set it down again and laid three fingers on my sleeve. "You speak of a change of clothes, sir. I will be frank with you--these breeches in which you behold me are my only ones. They were a present from my mother's sister, resident in Paisley, and I misdoubt there will have been something amiss in her instructions to the tailor, for they gall me woundily-- though in justice to her and the honest tradesman I should add that my legs, maybe, are out of practice since leaving Glasgow. At Largs, sir, I have been reverting to the ancestral garb." "You'll wear no such thing about the Hotwells," I interposed. "Indeed, I was not thinking it likely. My purpose was to procure another pair on my arrival--aye, and I would do so before breaking fast, had not circumstances which I will not detain you by relating put this for the moment out of the question. Do not mistake me, Dr. Frampton. In public I will thole these dreadful articles, though it cost me my skin; but in private, sir, if as a favour you will allow me--if, as a bachelor yourself, you will take it _sans gene_. And, by-the-by, I trust you will not scruple to point out any small defects in my French accent, which has been acquired entirely from books." He had, in fact, pronounced it "jeen," but I put this by. "Quite impossible, Mr. MacRea! I have to think of the servants." "Eh? You have servants!" "Four or five," said I. His eyes seemed ready to start out of his head. "I had opined by the way you opened the door with your own hand--" He broke off, and exclaimed: "Four or five servants! It will be a grand practice of yours! Well, go your ways, Dr. Frampton--I must e'en study to live up to you." Having piloted my eccentric upstairs and left him to his toilet, I lost no time in dressing and presenting myself at the Grand Pump Hotel, where I found my West Indian friend in a truly deplorable state of agitation. His face, ordinarily rubicund, bore traces of a sleepless night; indeed, it was plain that he had not changed his clothes since leaving the Assembly Rooms, where he invariably spent his evenings at a game of _faro_ for modest stakes. He grasped my hand, springing up to do so from a writing-table whereon lay several sheets of foolscap paper. "Ah! my dear friend, you are late!" was his greeting. "I thought I had been moderately expeditious," said I. "Yes, yes--perhaps so." He consulted his watch. "But with an affair of this sort hanging over one, the minutes drag. And yet, Heaven knows, mine may be few enough." "Pardon me," I said, "but to what sort of affair are you alluding?" "An affair of honour," he answered tragically.