ed him, he said. He
must drink with them, or play whist with another set, whose cards--he
emphatically added, giving me to understand much thereby--he did not
like. It was only for a short time, and he would be quit of them. This
was his day dream. My friend was always on the point of getting rid of
Boulogne; everything was just settled; and so, buoyed with a hope that
never staled, death caught him one summer's afternoon, in the Rue
Siblequin, and it was the bibulous sea captain and the very shady major
who shambled after him, when he was borne through those pretty _Petits
Arbres_ to the English section of the cemetery. Wrecks of many happy
families lie around him in that narrow field of rest; and passing
through on my state errands, I have thought once or twice, what sermons
indeed are there not in the headstones of Boulogne cemetery.

I was with my poor friend in the December of 1865. I was on way home to
pass a cheery Christmas with my own people--a luxury which was not often
reserved for me--and he had persuaded me to give him a couple of days.
It would have been hard to refuse Hanger, who had been gazing across
Channel so many weary months, seeing friends off whither he might not
follow; and wondering when he should trip down the ladder, and bustle
with the steward in the cabin, and ask the sailors whether we shall have
a fine passage. To see men and women and children crowding home to their
English Christmas from every corner of Europe, and to be left behind to
eat plum-pudding in a back parlour of an imitation British tavern, with
an obsolete skipper, and a ruined military man, whose family blushed
whenever his name was mentioned, was trying. Hanger protested he had no
sentiment about Christmas, but he nearly wrung my hand off when he took
leave of me.

It was while we were sauntering along the port, pushing hard against a
blustering northerly wind, and I was trying to get at the truth about
Hanger's affairs, advising him at every turn to grasp the bull by the
horns, adopt strong measures, look his creditors full in the face--the
common counsel people give their friends, but so seldom apply in their
own instance--that we were accosted by a man who had just landed from
the Folkestone boat. He wanted a place--yes, a cheap place--where they
spoke English and gave English fare. Hanger hastened to refer him to his
own British tavern, and, turning to me, said, "Must give Cross a good
turn--a useful fellow in an emerg