hat's a cool one if you like," replied Doubleday. "Why, it was
all we could do to keep you from wrenching off the knockers as well,
wasn't it, Crow?"

"Never thought we'd keep him from it," said Crow. "If the bobby hadn't
turned up, I do believe he'd have wanted to smash the windows also."

"You're making all this up," I said, half amused, half angry, and almost
beginning to wonder whether all that was being said of me was true.

"Not likely," said Doubleday; "the fact is, I couldn't have believed it
of you if I hadn't seen it. By the way, Wallop, is it true the Field-
Marshal was run in?"

"No, was he?" exclaimed Wallop, and Crow, and I, all in a breath.

"Well, I passed by Daly's this morning, and he told me he hadn't been
home all night, and he supposed he'd have to go and bail him out."

"What a game!" cried Wallop.

"You'd call it a game if you had to hand out forty shillings, or take a
week," replied Doubleday. "A nice expensive game this of yours, Master
Batchelor. It'll cost you more than all your eel-pies, and lobsters,
and flash toggery put together."

Fancy, reader, my amazement and horror at all this! It might be a joke
to all the rest, but it was anything but a joke to me. Instead of the
Field-Marshal it might have been I who was caught last night and locked
up in a police cell, and what then would have become of me? My
"friends" would all have laughed at it as a joke; but to me, I knew full
well, it would have been disgrace and ruin!

I was in no humour to pursue the conversation, particularly as Jack
Smith entered at that moment, composed and solemn as ever, without even
a glance at me.

My only escape from wretched memories and uncomfortable reflections was
in hard work, and that day I worked desperately. I was engaged in
checking some very elaborate accounts under Doubleday's direction the
whole day. It was a task which Wallop, to whom it fell by rights,
shirked and passed on to me, greatly to my indignation, a week ago. But
now it proved a very relief. The harder I worked, the easier my mind
became, and the more difficult the work appeared, the more I rejoiced to
have the tackling of it.

Our firm had received over a large cargo of miscellaneous goods from
India, which they were about to trans-ship to South America; and what I
had to do was first of all to reduce the value of the goods as they
appeared in Indian currency to their exact English value, and after
adding certain ch