k at
this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we
are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be,
to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now, I put it to you
pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your
continued and--excuse me--highly impudent _ingerence_ into my private
affairs?"

"Another French word," says he composedly.

"O! damn your French words!" cried I. "You seem to be a Frenchman
yourself!"

"I have had many opportunities by which I have profited," he explained.
"Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences,
whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages."

"You are a pompous fellow, too!" said I.

"O, I can make distinctions, sir," says he. "I can talk with
Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in
the company of a gentleman of education like yourself."

"If you set up to be a gentleman----" I began.

"Pardon me," he interrupted: "I make no such claim. I only see the
nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person."

"For the Lord's sake," I exclaimed, "set my mind at rest upon one point.
In the name of mystery, who and what are you?"

"I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir," said he, "nor yet my
trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel
Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir."

It was only by the ecstasy of the relief that I knew how horribly I had
been frightened. I flung my stick on the road.

"Romaine?" I cried. "Daniel Romaine? An old hunks with a red face and a
big head, and got up like a Quaker? My dear friend, to my arms!"

"Keep back, I say!" said Dudgeon weakly.

I would not listen to him. With the end of my own alarm, I felt as if I
must infallibly be at the end of all dangers likewise; as if the pistol
that he held in one hand were no more to be feared than the valise that
he carried with the other, and now put up like a barrier against my
advance.

"Keep back, or I declare I will fire," he was crying. "Have a care, for
God's sake! My pistol----"

He might scream as he pleased. Willy nilly, I folded him to my breast, I
pressed him there, I kissed his ugly mug as it had never been kissed
before and would never be kissed again; and in the doing so knocked his
wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep
in the arms of the butcher. The whole