ber judgment which had balanced those
qualities in the latter. Hot-headed, warm-hearted, liberal to
extravagance, fervent to fanaticism, unable to say No to any whom he
loved, loving and detesting with passionate intensity, constantly
betrayed into rash acts which he regretted bitterly the next hour,
possibly the next minute--this was Robert Basset. Not the same
character as Jack Enville, but one just as likely to go to wreck
early,--to dash itself wildly on the breakers, and be broken.

"Thou art alive enough now," said Basset. "But how knowest that I never
fell from a rock into the sea?"

Jack answered by a graceful flourish of his hands, and a stave of
another song.

"`There's never a maid in all this town
But she knows that malt's come down, -
Malt's come down,--malt's come down,
From an old angel to a French crown.'"

"I would it were," said Basset, folding his arms beneath his head. "I
am as dry as a hornblower."

"That is with blowing of thine own trumpet," responded Jack. "I say,
Tremayne! Give us thy thoughts for a silver penny."

"Give me the penny first," answered the meditative officer.

"Haven't an obolus," [halfpenny] confessed Jack.

"`The cramp is in my purse full sore,
No money will bide therein--'"

"Another time," observed Arthur Tremayne, "chaffer [deal in trade] not
till thou hast wherewith to pay for the goods."

"I am a gentleman, not a chapman," [a retail tradesman] said Jack,
superciliously.

"Could a man not be both?"

"'Tis not possible," returned Jack, with an astonished look. "How
should a chapman bear coat armour?"

"I reckon, though, he had fathers afore him," said Basset, with his eyes
shut.

"Nought but common men," said Jack, with sovereign contempt.

"And ours were uncommon men--there is all the difference," retorted
Basset.

"Yours were, in very deed," said Jack obsequiously.

This was, in truth, the entire cause of Jack's desire for Basset's
friendship. The latter, poor fellow! imagined that he was influenced by
personal regard.

"Didst think I had forgot it?" replied Basset, smiling.

"Ah! if I had but thy lineage!" answered Jack.

"Thine own is good enough, I cast no doubt. And I dare say Tremayne's
is worth something, if we could but win him to open his mouth thereon."

Jack's look was one of complete incredulity.

Arthur neither moved nor spoke.

"Hold thou thy peace, Jack Enville," said Basset, answering the look,
for Jack ha