laid beside the nose.

"How now?" said Clifford, between his ground teeth; "did I not tell thee
to put that huge bulk of thine as far from me as possible?"

"Humph!" granted Ned; "if these are my thanks, I may as well keep my
kindness to myself; but know you, my kid, that Lawyer Brandon is here,
peering through the crowd at this very moment, in order to catch a
glimpse of that woman's face of thine."

"Ha!" answered Clifford, in a very quick tone; "begone, then! I will
meet you without the rooms immediately." Clifford now turned to his
partner, and bowing very low, in reality to hide his face from those
sharp eyes which had once seen it in the court of Justice Burnflat,
said: "I trust, madam, I shall have the honour to meet you again. Is
it, if I may be allowed to ask, with your celebrated uncle that you are
staying, or--"

"With my father," answered Lucy, concluding the sentence Clifford had
left unfinished; "but my uncle has been with us, though I fear he leaves
us to-morrow."

Clifford's eyes sparkled; he made no answer, but bowing again, receded
into the crowd and disappeared. Several times that night did the
brightest eyes in Somersetshire rove anxiously round the rooms in search
of our hero; but he was seen no more.

It was on the stairs that Clifford encountered his comrades; taking an
arm of each, he gained the door without any adventure worth noting, save
that, being kept back by the crowd for a few moments, the moralizing
Augustus Tomlinson, who honoured the moderate Whigs by enrolling himself
among their number, took up, pour passer le temps, a tall gold-headed
cane, and weighing it across his finger with a musing air, said,
"Alas! among our supporters we often meet heads as heavy, but of what
a different metal!" The crowd now permitting, Augustus was walking away
with his companions, and, in that absence of mind characteristic of
philosophers, unconsciously bearing with him the gold-headed object of
his reflection, when a stately footman, stepping up to him, said, "Sir,
my cane!"

"Cane, fellow!" said Tomlinson. "Ah, I am so absent! Here is thy cane.
Only think of my carrying off the man's cane, Ned! Ha, ha!"

"Absent indeed!" grunted a knowing chairman, watching the receding
figures of the three gentlemen; "body o' me! but it was the cane that
was about to be absent!"

CHAPTER XVI.

Whackum. My dear rogues, dear boys, Bluster and Dingboy! you
are the bravest fellows