ver to his enemy, and in the course of half an hour they
were friends.

Eglantine promised to forego his claim; and accepted in lieu of it three
hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing twenty-five per
cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus Brothers, St. Swithin's
Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the SECOND class of the order
of the Castle and Falcon, with the riband and badge. "In four years,
Eglantine, my boy, I hope to get you the Grand Cordon of the order,"
said Walker: "I hope to see you a KNIGHT GRAND CROSS, with a grant of a
hundred thousand acres reclaimed from the Isthmus."

To do my poor Eglantine justice, he did not care for the hundred
thousand acres--it was the star that delighted him--ah! how his fat
chest heaved with delight as he sewed on the cross and riband to his
dress-coat, and lighted up four wax candles and looked at himself in
the glass. He was known to wear a great-coat after that--it was that he
might wear the cross under it. That year he went on a trip to Boulogne.
He was dreadfully ill during the voyage, but as the vessel entered
the port he was seen to emerge from the cabin, his coat open, the star
blazing on his chest; the soldiers saluted him as he walked the streets,
he was called Monsieur le Chevalier, and when he went home he entered
into negotiations with Walker to purchase a commission in His Highness's
service. Walker said he would get him the nominal rank of Captain, the
fees at the Panama War Office were five-and-twenty pounds, which
sum honest Eglantine produced, and had his commission, and a pack of
visiting cards printed as Captain Archibald Eglantine, K.C.F. Many a
time he looked at them as they lay in his desk, and he kept the cross in
his dressing-table, and wore it as he shaved every morning.

His Highness the Cacique, it is well known, came to England, and had
lodgings in Regent Street, where he held a levee, at which Eglantine
appeared in the Panama uniform, and was most graciously received by
his Sovereign. His Highness proposed to make Captain Eglantine his
aide-de-camp with the rank of Colonel, but the Captain's exchequer
was rather low at that moment, and the fees at the "War Office" were
peremptory. Meanwhile His Highness left Regent Street, was said by some
to have returned to Panama, by others to be in his native city of Cork,
by others to be leading a life of retirement in the New Cut, Lambeth;
at any rate was not visible for some time,