ds down the road! Titmouse did not
fully recover his breath or his senses for a long while afterwards. When
he did, the first thing he experienced, was a dreadful disposition
towards sickness; but gradually overcoming it, he felt an inclination to
fall down on his knees in the open road, and worship the sagacious and
admirable GAMMON, who had so exactly predicted what had come to pass!

And now, Mr. Titmouse, for some little time I have done with you.
Away!--give room to your betters. But don't think that I have yet
"rifled _all_ your sweetness," or am _yet_ about to "fling you like a
noisome weed away."

CHAPTER VII.

While the lofty door of a house in Grosvenor Street was yet quivering
under the shock of a previously announced dinner-arrival, one of the two
servants standing behind a carriage which approached from the direction
of Piccadilly, slipped off, and in a twinkling, with a
thun-thun-thunder-under-under, thunder-runder-runder, thun-thun-thun!
and a shrill thrilling _Whir-r-r_ of the bell, announced the arrival of
the Duke of----, the last guest. It was a large and plain carriage, but
perfectly well known; and before the door of the house at which it had
drawn up had been opened, displaying some four or five servants standing
in the hall, in simple but elegant liveries, some half-dozen passengers
had stopped to see get out of the carriage an elderly, middle-sized man,
with a somewhat spare figure, dressed in plain black clothes, with
iron-gray hair, and a countenance which, once seen, was not to be
forgotten. That was a great man; one, the like of whom many previous
centuries had not seen; whose name shot terror into the hearts of all
the enemies of old England all over the world, and fond pride and
admiration into the hearts of his fellow-countrymen.

"A quarter to eleven!" he said, in a quiet tone, to the servant who was
holding open the carriage door--while the bystanders took off their
hats; a courtesy which he acknowledged, as he slowly stepped across the
pavement, by touching his hat in a mechanical sort of way with his
forefinger. The house-door then closed upon him; the handful of
onlookers passed away; off rolled the empty carriage, and all without
was quiet as before. The house was that of Mr. Aubrey, one of the
members for the borough of YATTON, in Yorkshire--a man of rapidly rising
importance in Parliament. Surely his was a pleasant position--that of an
independent country gentleman, a m