"Campbell," cried Cameron, as his debtor entered, "I want my £10 to pay Nightingale."
"Ask Dewhurst," said Campbell. "I have been cheated by him. He told me a lie. The woman speaks true, and I shall be revenged."
"I have nothing to do with Dewhurst," answered Cameron. "You are my debtor; and if I don't get the money to-night—you know my lodgings—the club will decide upon it to-morrow."
And, throwing a withering look upon his old friend—a word now changed for, and lost in that expressive vocable, debtor—he hurried out, followed by Hamilton, who had both his money and his revenge, and wished to be beyond the reach of a recall.
Left to themselves, the two remaining friends of the hour before, but now no longer friends, looked sternly at each other. The one considered himself duped; the other was burning under the imputation of being a cheat and a liar.
"Oh I don't retract," said Campbell, with increased fierceness. "It was upon the faith of your word that I ventured the bet against my own convictions. I have traced the lady to Great King Street, where she resides, as the aunt of the boy; and I am satisfied that, in a case where the boy's mother is alive, and now in her own house, he, of the age he is, never could have used the word mother or mamma, or any word of that import, to his father's sister. All power and energies are comparative. This £10 cracks the spine of my fortune as effectually as ten times the amount. I have not the money, and know no more where to find it than I do to get hold of the philosopher's stone. I repeat I have been cheated, and I demand of you the money."
"Which you shall never get," replied Dewhurst. "I can swear that I heard the words. They thrill on my ears now; and the best proof of my conviction is, that I am myself ruined. Yes," and he began to roll his eyes about, as the terrors of his situation came rushing upon him, on the wake of the now departing effects of the Rainbow wine—"Yes, the swell, the fop, the leader of the college ton, whose coat came from the artistic study of Willis, whose necktie could raise a furore, whose glove, without a wrinkle, would condescend only to be touched by friendship on the tip of the finger, is now at the mercy of any one of twenty sleasy dogs, who can tell the sheriff I owe them money. Money! why, I have only fifteen pounds in the wide world, and I must pay that to my landlady."
As he uttered these last words, the door opened, and there stood before him a man with a blue coat, surmounted by a red collar. He held a paper in his hand; his demeanour was deferential and exuberantly polite.
"That sum you have mentioned, sir," he said, looking to the student, "with £10 added, will save you and me much trouble. The debt to Mr. Reid is £25; and here is a certain paper which gives me the power to do an unpolite thing. You comprehend? I am an advocate for painless operations."
"Will you accept the £15?" said Dewhurst, now scarcely able to articulate.