"Yes."
"And what are they that I have not heard—tell me that, Mr. Sharkley—what are they that I have not heard?" said Braddon with the angry emphasis assumed at times unnecessarily by the inebriated.
"Is it that your young master is shut up among the Afghans, and likely, I fear, to remain so?"
"Her Majesty the Queen don't think so—no, sir—d—n me, whatever you, and such as you, may think," responded Derrick, becoming suddenly sulky and gloomy.
"Who do you mean, Braddon?" asked the other, drinking, and eying him keenly over his pewter-pot.
"Did you see to-day's Gazette?"
"The Bankruptcy list?"
"Bankrupts be—" roared Braddon, contemptuously, striking his clenched hand on the deal table; "no—the War Office Gazette."
Mr. W. S. Sharkley faintly and timidly indicated that as it was a part of the newspapers which possessed but small interest for him, he certainly had not seen it.
"Well, that is strange now," said Derrick; "it is almost the only bit of a paper I ever read."