What's your collar-stud to do with me, or Batchelor?" demanded Smith,
who evidently saw nothing to laugh at.

"Why, you've stolen it!" shouted Horncastle.

Smith gazed solemnly at the speaker.

"You're a fool," he said, quietly.

This cool remark drove the irate Horncastle nearly frantic. He advanced
up to Smith with a face as red as the collar-stud he had lost, and
cried, "Say that again, and I'll knock you down."

"You're a fool," quietly repeated Jack.

Horncastle didn't knock him down, or attempt to do so. He turned on his
heel and said, "We'll see if we're to be robbed by shop-boy cads, or any
of your young thieving friends. I'll complain to the police, and let
them know you know all about it, you two."

"I don't know anything about it," said I, feeling it incumbent on me to
make a remark, "except that I don't think a red bone collar-stud costs
ten shillings." This occasioned another laugh at the expense of Mr
Horncastle, who retorted, "You're a companion of thieves and
blackguards, that's what you are. I'll have you kicked out of the
house."

And as if to suit the action to the word, he advanced towards me and
aimed a vehement kick at my person.

I had just time to dodge the blow, but as I did so something knocked
against my hand. Fancy my astonishment when, stooping to pick it up, I
found that it was the missing red bone collar-stud, which had dropped
into the leg of its stately owner's trousers, and which this kick had
unearthed from its hiding-place!

The laugh was now all against the discomfited Horncastle. Even those
who had at first been disposed to side with him against Jack and me
could not resist the merriment which this revelation occasioned,
particularly when the stud, which Horncastle at once identified, was
discovered to be an ordinary painted bone article, with a good deal of
the red worn off, of the kind usually sold in the streets for a penny.

Jack and I had at least the relief of feeling that so far we ourselves
were the only sufferers by our hospitality to our little ragamuffin
acquaintance.

But more was to come of this adventure, as the reader will see.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

HOW SMITH WENT HOME AND I TOOK PART IN AN EVENING PARTY.

Two days after the events recorded in the last chapter something
happened which materially affected the course of my life in London.

Smith and I were just starting off to the office, after having finally
made our submission to Mrs Nash,