'And how did it end?'

'When he'd done talking I offered him a cigar, and while he was biting
off the end went upstairs. I suppose he went away when he was tired of
waiting.'

'I'll tell you what, Dolly; I wish you'd let me ride two of yours for
a couple of days,--that is, of course, if you don't want them yourself.
You ain't tight now, at any rate.'

'No; I ain't tight,' said Dolly, with melancholy acquiescence.

'I mean that I wouldn't like to borrow your horses without your
remembering all about it. Nobody knows as well as you do how awfully
done up I am. I shall pull through at last, but it's an awful squeeze
in the meantime. There's nobody I'd ask such a favour of except you.'

'Well, you may have them;--that is, for two days. I don't know whether
that fellow of mine will believe you. He wouldn't believe Grasslough,
and told him so. But Grasslough took them out of the stables. That's
what somebody told me.'

'You could write a line to your groom.'

'Oh my dear fellow, that is such a bore; I don't think I could do
that. My fellow will believe you, because you and I have been pals. I
think I'll have a little drop of curacoa before dinner. Come along and
try it. It'll give us an appetite.'

It was then nearly seven o'clock. Nine hours afterwards the same two
men, with two others--of whom young Lord Grasslough, Dolly
Longestaffe's peculiar aversion, was one--were just rising from a
card-table in one of the upstairs rooms of the club. For it was
understood that, though the Beargarden was not to be open before three
o'clock in the afternoon, the accommodation denied during the day was
to be given freely during the night. No man could get a breakfast at
the Beargarden, but suppers at three o'clock in the morning were quite
within the rule. Such a supper, or rather succession of suppering,
there had been to-night, various devils and broils and hot toasts
having been brought up from time to time first for one and then for
another. But there had been no cessation of gambling since the cards
had first been opened about ten o'clock. At four in the morning Dolly
Longestaffe was certainly in a condition to lend his horses and to
remember nothing about it. He was quite affectionate with Lord
Grasslough, as he was also with his other companions,--affection being
the normal state of his mind when in that condition. He was by no
means helplessly drunk, and was, perhaps, hardly more silly than when
he was sober; but he wa