“Very well, then,—I’m not particular; a tumbler of braundy and water, stiffish, cold without, the newspaper—and a cigar. You’ll excuse smoking, sir?”
Philip looked up from his hoard, and Captain de Burgh Smith stood before him.
“Ah!” said the latter, “well met!” And closing the door, he took off his great-coat, seated himself near Philip, and bent both his eyes with considerable wistfulness on the neat rows into which Philip’s bank-notes, sovereigns, and shillings were arrayed.
“Pretty little sum for pocket money; caush in hand goes a great way, properly invested. You must have been very lucky. Well, so I suppose you are surprised to see me here without my pheaton?”
“I wish I had never seen you at all,” replied Philip, uncourteously, and restoring his money to his pocket; “your fraud upon Mr. Stubmore, and your assurance that you knew me, have sent me adrift upon the world.”
“What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” said the captain, philosophically; “no use fretting, care killed a cat. I am as badly off as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted—went to N——, left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country. You recollect that noice girl we saw in the coach; ‘gad, I served her spouse that is to be a praetty trick! Borrowed his money under pretence of investing it in the New Grand Anti-Dry-Rot Company; cool hundred—it’s only just gone, sir.”
Here the chambermaid entered with the brandy and water, the newspaper, and cigar,—the captain lighted the last, took a deep sup from the beverage, and said, gaily:
“Well, now, let us join fortunes; we are both, as you say, ‘adrift.’ Best way to staund the breeze is to unite the caubles.”
Philip shook his head, and, displeased with his companion, sought his pillow. He took care to put his money under his head, and to lock his door.
The brothers started at daybreak; Sidney was even more discontented than on the previous day. The weather was hot and oppressive; they rested for some hours at noon, and in the cool of the evening renewed their way. Philip had made up his mind to steer for a town in the thick of a hunting district, where he hoped his equestrian capacities might again befriend him; and their path now lay through a chain of vast dreary commons, which gave them at least the advantage to skirt the road-side unobserved. But, somehow or other, either Philip had been misinformed as to an inn where he had proposed to pass the night, or he had missed it; for the clouds darkened, and the sun went down, and no vestige of human habitation was discernible.