eath of a ragged urchin at the corner of
Chancery Lane. I had forgotten my eagerness to know whence they had
heard of my plight, when some words from Comyn aroused me.

"The carriage is Mr. Horace Walpole's, Richard. He has taken a great
fancy to you."

"But I have never so much as clapped eyes upon him!" I exclaimed in
perplexity.

"How about his honour with whom you supped at Windsor? how about the
landlord you spun by the neck? You should have heard the company laugh
when Horry told us that! And Miss Dolly cried out that she was sure it
must be Richard, and none other. Is it not so, Miss Manners?"

"Really, my Lord, I can't remember," replied Dolly, looking out of the
coach window. "Who put those frightful skulls upon Temple Bar?"

Then the mystery of their coming was clear to me, and the superior
gentleman at the Castle Inn had been the fashionable dabbler in arts and
letters and architecture of Strawberry Hill, of whom I remembered having
heard Dr. Courtenay speak, Horace Walpole. But I was then far too
concerned about Dorothy to listen to more. Her face was still turned
away from me, and she was silent. I could have cut out my tongue for my
blunder. Presently, when we were nearly out of the Strand, she turned
upon me abruptly.

"We have not yet heard, Richard," she said, "how you got into such a
predicament."

"Indeed, I don't know myself, Dolly. Some scoundrel bribed the captain
of the slaver. For I take it Mr. Walpole has told you I was carried off
on a slaver, if he recalled that much of the story."

"I don't mean that," answered Dolly, impatiently. "There is something
strange about all this. How is it that you were in prison?"

"Mr. Dix, my grandfather's agent, took me for an impostor and would
advance me no money," I answered, hard pushed.

But Dorothy had a woman's instinct, which is often the best of
understanding. And I was beginning to think that a suspicion was at the
bottom of her questions. She gave her head an impatient fling, and, as I
feared, appealed to John Paul.

"Perhaps you can tell me, captain, why he did not come to his friends in
his trouble."

And despite my signals to him he replied: "In truth, my dear lady, he
haunted the place for a sight of you, from the moment he set foot in
London."

Comyn laughed, and I felt the blood rise to my face, and kicked John Paul
viciously. Dolly retained her self-possession.

"Pho!" says she; "for a sight of me! You seamen are all alike. F