accompany the meal. The Chevalier was now, as he
said, "in clover:" he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd's
Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and comrade of his
whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and found at a crossing
in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated to the rank of
body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present, shared his
lodgings. This was no other than the favourite of the Nawaub of Lucknow,
the valiant Colonel Altamont.

No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned Strong,
and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connexion which, very
soon after their first meeting at Baymouth was established between Sir
Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew some
secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his power,
somehow; and Strong, who knew that his patron's early life had been
rather irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had not
been brilliant, supposed that the Colonel, who swore he knew Clavering
well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which the latter
was forced to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood Sir Francis
Clavering's character, as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in
principle, and intellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon.

With poor Clavering, his Excellency had had one or two interviews after
their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the Baronet
did not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
gentleman, who was his ambassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding ill
humour; for he crushed Clavering's letter in his hand, and said with his
own particular manner and emphasis:--

"A hundred, be hanged. I'll have no more letters nor no more
shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I'll have a thousand, or by Jove I'll
split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand and I'll
go abroad, and I give you my honour as a gentleman, I'll not ask him for
no more for a year. Give him that message from me, Strong, my boy; and
tell him if the money ain't here next Friday at twelve o'clock, as
sure as my name's what it is, I'll have a paragraph in the newspaper on
Saturday, and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."

Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
was such that actually on the day and hour