opportunity of ascertaining the condition of
Sir Mulberry Hawk, and to what extent he had, by this time, recovered
from the injuries consequent on being flung violently from his
cabriolet, under the circumstances already detailed.

With a shattered limb, a body severely bruised, a face disfigured by
half-healed scars, and pallid from the exhaustion of recent pain and
fever, Sir Mulberry Hawk lay stretched upon his back, on the couch to
which he was doomed to be a prisoner for some weeks yet to come. Mr Pyke
and Mr Pluck sat drinking hard in the next room, now and then varying
the monotonous murmurs of their conversation with a half-smothered
laugh, while the young lord--the only member of the party who was not
thoroughly irredeemable, and who really had a kind heart--sat beside his
Mentor, with a cigar in his mouth, and read to him, by the light of a
lamp, such scraps of intelligence from a paper of the day, as were most
likely to yield him interest or amusement.

'Curse those hounds!' said the invalid, turning his head impatiently
towards the adjoining room; 'will nothing stop their infernal throats?'

Messrs Pyke and Pluck heard the exclamation, and stopped immediately:
winking to each other as they did so, and filling their glasses to the
brim, as some recompense for the deprivation of speech.

'Damn!' muttered the sick man between his teeth, and writhing
impatiently in his bed. 'Isn't this mattress hard enough, and the room
dull enough, and pain bad enough, but THEY must torture me? What's the
time?'

'Half-past eight,' replied his friend.

'Here, draw the table nearer, and let us have the cards again,' said Sir
Mulberry. 'More piquet. Come.'

It was curious to see how eagerly the sick man, debarred from any change
of position save the mere turning of his head from side to side, watched
every motion of his friend in the progress of the game; and with what
eagerness and interest he played, and yet how warily and coolly. His
address and skill were more than twenty times a match for his adversary,
who could make little head against them, even when fortune favoured him
with good cards, which was not often the case. Sir Mulberry won every
game; and when his companion threw down the cards, and refused to play
any longer, thrust forth his wasted arm and caught up the stakes with a
boastful oath, and the same hoarse laugh, though considerably lowered in
tone, that had resounded in Ralph Nickleby's dining-room, month