that say London's but a
kennel to't."

"Be there so?" quoth Mr. Caryll indifferently.

"Ye don't agree with them, belike?" asked Mr. Green, with eagerness.

"Pooh! Men will say anything," Mr. Caryll replied, and added pointedly:
"Men will talk, ye see."

"Not always," was the retort in a sly tone. "I've known men to be
prodigious short when they had aught to hide."

"Have ye so? Ye seem to have had a wide experience." And Mr. Caryll
sauntered out, humming a French air through closed lips.

Mr. Green looked after him with hardened eyes. He turned to the drawer
who stood by. "He's mighty close," said he. "Mighty close!"

"Ye're not perhaps quite the company he cares for," the drawer suggested
candidly.

Mr. Green looked at him. "Very like," he snapped. "How long does he stay
here?"

"Ye lost a rare chance of finding out when ye let him go without
inquiring," said the drawer.

Mr. Green's face lost some of its chubbiness. "When d'ye look to marry
the landlady?" was his next question.

The man stared. "Cod!" said he. "Marry the--Are ye daft?"

Mr. Green affected surprise. "I'm mistook, it seems. Ye misled me by
your pertness. Get me another nipperkin."

Meanwhile Mr. Caryll had taken his way above stairs to the room set
apart for him. He dined to his satisfaction, and thereafter, his
shapely, silk-clad legs thrown over a second chair, his waistcoat
all unbuttoned, for the day was of an almost midsummer warmth--he sat
mightily at his ease, a decanter of sherry at his elbow, a pipe in one
hand and a book of Mr. Gay's poems in the other. But the ease went no
further than the body, as witnessed the circumstances that his pipe was
cold, the decanter tolerably full, and Mr. Gay's pleasant rhymes and
quaint conceits of fancy all unheeded. The light, mercurial spirit which
he had from nature and his unfortunate mother, and which he had retained
in spite of the stern training he had received at his adoptive father's
hands, was heavy-fettered now.

The mild fatigue of his journey through the heat of the day had led him
to look forward to a voluptuous hour of indolence following upon dinner,
with pipe and book and glass. The hour was come, the elements were
there, but since he could not abandon himself to their dominion the
voluptuousness was wanting. The task before him haunted him with
anticipatory remorse. It hung upon his spirit like a sick man's dream.
It obtruded itself upon his constant thought, and the more