n Costigan,
that the Captain made a mystery regarding his lodgings for fear of duns,
or from a desire of privacy, and lived in some wonderful place. Nor
would the landlord of the premises, when questioned upon this subject,
answer any inquiries; his maxim being that he only knew gentlemen who
frequented that room, in that room; that when they quitted that room,
having paid their scores as gentlemen, and behaved as gentlemen, his
communication with them ceased; and that, as a gentleman himself,
he thought it was only impertinent curiosity to ask where any other
gentleman lived. Costigan, in his most intoxicated and confidential
moments, also evaded any replies to questions or hints addressed to him
on this subject: there was no particular secret about it, as we have
seen, who have had more than once the honour of entering his apartments,
but in the vicissitudes of a long life he had been pretty often in the
habit of residing in houses where privacy was necessary to his comfort,
and where the appearance of some visitors would have brought him
anything but pleasure. Hence all sorts of legends were formed by wags or
credulous persons respecting his place of abode. It was stated that he
slept habitually in a watch-box in the city: in a cab at a mews, where a
cab-proprietor gave him a shelter: in the Duke of York's Column etc,
the wildest of these theories being put abroad by the facetious and
imaginative Huxter. For Huxey, when not silenced by the company of
"swells," and when in the society of his own friends, was a very
different fellow to the youth whom we have seen cowed by Pen's
impertinent airs, and, adored by his family at home, was the life and
soul of the circle whom he met, either round the festive board or the
dissecting table. On one brilliant September morning, as Huxter was
regaling himself with a cup of coffee at a stall in Covent Garden,
having spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he spied the General
reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting blackguard boys
at his heels, who had left their beds under the arches of the river
betimes, and were prowling about already for breakfast, and the strange
livelihood of the day. The poor old General was not in that condition
when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had much effect upon
him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him and passed their
comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and warned the boys off
him, with looks