g his master's decision. "It
is an element which I could live and die in."

"The bar, then, for me," said Peveril; and stepping back, whispered to
Lance to exchange cloaks with him, desirous, if possible, to avoid being
recognised.

The exchange was made in an instant; and presently afterwards the
landlord brought a light; and as he guided Julian into his hostelry,
cautioned him to sit quiet in the place where he should stow him; and if
he was discovered, to say that he was one of the house, and leave him
to make it good. "You will hear what the gallants say," he added; "but I
think thou wilt carry away but little on it; for when it is not French,
it is Court gibberish; and that is as hard to construe."

The bar, into which our hero was inducted on these conditions, seemed
formed, with respect to the public room, upon the principle of a
citadel, intended to observe and bridle a rebellious capital. Here sat
the host on the Saturday evenings, screened from the observation of
his guests, yet with the power of observing both their wants and their
behaviour, and also that of overhearing their conversation--a practice
which he was much addicted to, being one of that numerous class of
philanthropists, to whom their neighbours' business is of as much
consequence, or rather more, than their own.

Here he planted his new guest, with a repeated caution not to disturb
the gentlemen by speech or motion; and a promise that he should be
speedily accommodated with a cold buttock of beef, and a tankard of
home-brewed. And here he left him with no other light than that which
glimmered from the well-illuminated apartment within, through a sort of
shuttle which accommodated the landlord with a view into it.

This situation, inconvenient enough in itself, was, on the present
occasion, precisely what Julian would have selected. He wrapped himself
in the weather-beaten cloak of Lance Outram, which had been stained, by
age and weather, into a thousand variations from its original Lincoln
green; and with as little noise as he could, set himself to observe the
two inmates, who had engrossed to themselves the whole of the apartment,
which was usually open to the public. They sat by a table well covered
with such costly rarities, as could only have been procured by much
forecast, and prepared by the exquisite Mons. Chaubert; to which both
seemed to do much justice.

Julian had little difficulty in ascertaining, that one of the travellers
wa