"I'll be judged by Bellinger!" exclaimed the gentleman who held the paper, looking at the new-comer over the others' heads. "Bellinger knows; Bellinger shall decide; Bellinger never leaves town even for a day. Five guineas, Bellinger gives it in my favour!"
"Done!" said a little man in a plum-coloured suit, with enormous ruffles at his wrists, offering his snuff-box to the referee, who looked from one to the other in vague surprise.
"The fact is this," said the little man; "our friend Sir Alexander, there, has been reading an account in the North Briton of a fellow who lives somewhere near Covent Garden, and keeps a kind of prophesy shop, where half the ladies in town go to learn each other's secrets, and tell their own. The newspaper affirms that he has been driving this trade for years; and though all the while the prophet, or whatever he calls himself, is a spy from over the water, that our ministry never found it out! Sir Alexander vows it's impossible, and appeals to you, my lord, as knowing more of the town and its wicked ways than any man in this room. What say you, Bellinger? I have only five guineas on it; but if I had five hundred, I would abide by your award!"
Lord Bellinger's presence of mind rarely deserted him; and although with the topic thus broached, the possibility of Katerfelto's treachery flashed across his brain, he answered quietly: "You do me too much honour, my lord; I cannot give an opinion. I have been in the country more than a week."
"The country!" repeated half-a-dozen voices, in tones of surprise and incredulity. "Bellinger in the country! What, in the name of all that is innocent, should take you to the country? You who have never slept a night out of town since you came of age. Think of the risks! You might have caught milk-fever or chicken-pox! We must believe it, my lord, because your lordship says so."
"It only shows how little a fellow is missed!" replied Lord Bellinger, not too well pleased to find his absence had been unnoticed by those among whom he considered himself a man of mark. "Did you never hear of my coach being robbed; money and papers carried off; myself, my lady, and my servants made prisoners on parole by a band of gipsies, and a highwayman riding a grey horse? On my honour, gentlemen, I believe not one of you cares a brass farthing for any earthly thing that takes place beyond ten miles from London or two from Newmarket!"
He spoke bitterly, and with an energy so unlike his usual careless manner, that the man in the plum-coloured coat gazed at him in undisguised astonishment.
"A grey horse!" repeated this nobleman, tapping his snuff-box. "The best-actioned horse I ever saw in my life was a grey, and belonged to a highwayman—a fellow they called Galloping Jack. It must have been the very man!"
"Two to one against him!" interrupted a bystander. "Ten guineas to five, my lord, that no gentleman of the road would show such bad taste as to rob Bellinger, or such deplorable ignorance as to suppose his purse was worth taking."
"I'll go you halves," said a tall youth. "I remember the grey horse, and the man in the mask who rode him; what became of the horse I never heard, but the man was hanged at Tyburn last November!"