"The true Falernian," says my companion, smacking his lips. "I would that Roman fellow were here in the room of Tommie, who sits like a dead dog in a dry ditch. I have remarked it before, and I remark it again, that I can never understand how it is that a man who can keep such a full-bodied, generous wine in his cellar should yet keep such a lean, ill-liberal heart in his body. It is an internal paradox on which I break my brains anew. You would think that one would cry out upon the other, and that they could live together no better than a keg of gunpowder and a live coal. And how in the first place they ever came to be associated passes me. Ring the bell, Tommie, and tell 'em to bring us up another bottle a-piece."
While Sir Thomas did so with the mechanical meekness of one well accustomed to obey, says I:
"I think I can give you ease on this last matter, sir. Hath it never struck you that our host may have bought his cellar at the same shop that he bought his ancestors? It sticks in my mind that I have met both his forebears and his vintages before. Indeed, to come down to the details of this odd matter, I believe at the period of which I speak they may have had my name appended to them."
"Shrewdly said, sir," says my companion; and then going on to another matter which I had sedulously been leading up to, for I had come to the conclusion that my one chance of ultimate escape lay in betraying myself entirely, continued: "You begin to interest me vastly. I confess you are a man after my own heart. I like your talk, I like your manner, the colour of your eye, the cock of your old beak, i'faith, I like you altogether. You are the very perfect gentle guest; you abuse your host and drink his wine with the same impartial spirit. You bear the same relation to a gypsy as our club-footed Thomas does to the herald Mercury. No, no, my good sir, it will not do; ex ungue leonem."
"Your compliments charm me," says I, raising the glass to my lips again, "but I could have wished, sir, that you had not nosed out my incognito. It may be the source of a greater inconvenience than I care to think about, if it and I part company."
"The blame is entirely your own, sir," says the other. "Hercules should not try to hide behind an arbutus tree. But no man ever had aught to fear from me, unless that man was myself. To him, it is true, I have been a great enemy. Yet I'll swear on my life that even that poor unlucky young man whose name is proscribed in this morning's news-letter would never be a penny the worse for revealing himself to such a rough fellow as me. As for Tommie, I will answer for Tommie too. It is true that Tommie hath weaknesses, but they are on the surface mostly. If he can never forget that Nature had a hand in the fashioning of Sir T. Wheatley, Knight, and Justice of the Peace, and is in a sense a self-made man therefore, he nevertheless hath a very good heart. I can answer for Tommie as for myself."
When he came to mention the "poor unlucky young man," I suppose I must have winced or blinked a little, or he was a marvellously subtle and keen observer, for after looking into my eyes, he slapped his hand on his thigh, and cried:
"By God, can it be? Surely it is too whimsical, too fantastical. These things do not happen outside the story books."
"Such a coincidence is a little after the manner of Tom Jones, to be sure, sir," says I.
I suppose it was the word "story books" that led to my mentioning that immortal novel which at that moment held all the town in a spell of wonder and delight. But no sooner had I uttered the magic name of Tom Jones than I thought I saw my companion's flushed face flush deeper than ever, and at the same instant my mind was assailed with a dozen points of recognition. In a flash I jumped to the conclusion that I was being entertained by the author of that inimitable work. For a moment we sat regarding one another with the frankest amusement. Then my companion took up his glass, and lifting it slowly to his lips, says: