"And if this had been in the Scotch Highlands now, landlord, you would have been sure of being in your coffin before the year was out."
"Why I know not for that, Sir: but it's not lucky in any country for a man to see his own likeness walking about: and I'll not deny but I was a little startled; and I sate me down amongst the Blazer's men, and could not speak a word. And says he to me--(but he turned his face rather away)--'Good man, did you call for whiskey?' And I could have sworn to the voice for my own amongst a thousand: But, when he served me the whiskey, I looked hard at him; and I saw it was Nicholas. But I had'nt the heart to betray him: and I says to him--'Landlord, how are you? and how goes business?'--'Business?' says he, 'we've business for evermore; I'm run off my feet with business.' And sure enough he took sixpence of me in my own bar; and fifteen shillings of the revenue men for smuggled brandy. And whilst they were drinking, out he slips--and whips away at the north gate by the very same road they had all come; and two minutes after the lieutenant and his company were off, as if the devil drove 'em, to the south."
"This extraordinary talent for personating every age and character," said the manager, "he learned (or improved however) whilst he was in my troop. He was the best actor I ever had: nothing came amiss to him--Richard the Third, or Aguecheek; Shylock or Pistol--Romeo or the Apothecary--Hamlet or the Cock[[2]]: for by the way he once took it into his head to play the Cock in the first scene of Hamlet; and he crowed in so very superior a style that the oldest cock in the neighbourhood was taken in, and got to answering him; and the crowing spread from one farm-house to another till all the cocks in Carnarvonshire were crowing."
"Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Manager, and what said the audience to this?"
"What said the audience? Why they encored him--pit, boxes, and gallery: and the ghost was obliged to come on again, that he might be crowed off again. But all this was when he was a boy of 17: for he soon got tired of the stage."
"Aye, he grows tired of every thing," said some of the company: "and by this time, I'll be bound for it, he's grown tired of smuggling: and, if it be true that he has had any thing to do with Thistlewood, that's the reason."
"No," said another, "that's not the reason; tired of smuggling, I dare say he was; for a man, like Nicholas, could never have liked it for any thing but its active life, and its danger and its difficulties. But, if any thing has brought him connected with Cato-street, it is love."
"Love! what love for Lord Londonderry?"
"No, no, you guess what I mean; there are few in this room but know pretty well what I mean; love for a young lady in the neighbourhood."
"Miss Walladmor, I suppose?"