to aim at--only a friend to shake by the hand. The poor fellow had
half the town in his confidence; everybody knew everything about his
loves and his debts, his creditors or his mistress's obduracy. When
Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick was all flames and
raptures for a young lady, a West India fortune, whom he married. In a
couple of years the lady was dead, the fortune was all but spent, and
the honest widower was as eager in pursuit of a new paragon of beauty,
as if he had never courted and married and buried the last one.

Quitting the Guard-table one Sunday afternoon, when by chance Dick had a
sober fit upon him, he and his friend were making their way down Germain
Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his companion's arm, and ran after
a gentleman who was poring over a folio volume at the book-shop near to
St. James's Church. He was a fair, tall man, in a snuff-colored suit,
with a plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance--at
least when compared to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his jolly
round person with the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold
lace. The Captain rushed up, then, to the student of the book-stall,
took him in his arms, hugged him, and would have kissed him--for Dick
was always hugging and bussing his friends--but the other stepped
back with a flush on his pale face, seeming to decline this public
manifestation of Steele's regard.

"My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this age?" cries the
Captain, still holding both his friend's hands; "I have been languishing
for thee this fortnight."

"A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the other, very good-humoredly.
(He had light blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly
regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) "And I have been hiding
myself--where do you think?"

"What! not across the water, my dear Joe?" says Steele, with a look of
great alarm: "thou knowest I have always--"

"No," says his friend, interrupting him with a smile: "we are not come
to such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where
people never think of finding you--at my own lodgings, whither I am
going to smoke a pipe now and drink a glass of sack: will your honor
come?"

"Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. "Thou hast heard me talk
over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guardian angel?"

"Indeed," says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, "it is not from you only that I
have learnt to admi