s time, his talents, his
ingenuity, his influence, and his purse. He could give them everything
but one; he could not make them heroes in his stories. No, his romance
was his own realm, and he could share it with none.

Listen to him, and there never was a man so traded on,--so robbed and
pilfered from. A Chancellor of the Exchequer had caught up that notion
of his about the tax on domestic cats. It was on the railroad he had
dropped that hint about a supply of cordials in all fire-escapes. That
clever suggestion of a web livery that would fit footmen of all sizes
was his; he remembered the day he made it, and the fellow that stole it,
too, on the chain-pier at Brighton. What leaders in the "Times,"
what smart things in the "Saturday," what sketches in "Punch" were
constructed out of his dinner-talk!

Poor Tony listened to all these with astonishment, and even confusion,
for one-half, at least, of the topics were totally strange and new to
him. "Tell me," said he at last, with a bold effort to come back to a
land of solid reality, "what of that poor fellow whose bundle I carried
away with me? Your letter said something mysterious about him, which I
could make nothing of."

"Ah, yes,--a dangerous dog,--a friend of Mazzini's, and a member of I
can't say how many secret societies. The Inspector, hearing that I had
asked after him at the hotel, came up to F. O. t' other morning to learn
what I knew of him, and each of us tried for full half an hour to pump
the other."

"I 'll not believe one word against him," said Tony, sturdily; "an
honester, franker face I never looked at."

"No doubt! Who would wish to see a better-looking fellow than Orsini?"

"And what has become of him,--of Quin, I mean?"

"Got away, clean away, and no one knows how or where. I 'll tell _you_,
Tony," said he, "what I would not tell another,--that they stole that
idea of the explosive bombs from _me_."

"You don't mean to say--"

"Of course not, old fellow. I 'm not a man to counsel assassination;
but in the loose way I talk, throwing out notions for this and hints for
that, they caught up this idea just as Blakeney did that plan of mine
for rifling large guns."

Tony fixed his eyes on him for a moment or two in silence, and then said
gravely, "I think it must be near dinnertime; let us saunter towards
home."

CHAPTER XXXIII. A MORNING CALL AT TILNEY

On the morning after this conversation, the two friends set out for
Tilney; Skeff