And he faced round with a third attitude.

“Do you know Mr. Briggs?” asked the straightforward Major.  He rolled his eyes to every quarter of the seventh sphere, clapped his hand upon his heart, and assumed an expression of angelic gratitude:—­

  “My benefactor!  Were the world a waste,
  A thistle-waste, ass-nibbled, goldfinch-pecked,
  And all the men and women merely asses,
  I still could lay this hand upon this heart,
  And cry, ’Not yet alone!  I know a man—­
  A man Jove-fronted, and Hyperion-curled—­
  A gushing, flushing, blushing human heart!’”

“As sure as you live, sir,” said Tom, “if you won’t talk honest prose,
I won’t pay for the brandy and water.”

  “Base is the slave who pays, and baser prose—­
  Hang uninspired patter!  ’Tis in verse
  That angels praise, and fiends in Limbo curse.”

“And asses bray, I think,” said Tom, in despair.  “Do you know where Mr. Briggs is now?”

  “And why the devil do you want to know? 
  For that’s a verse, sir, although somewhat slow.”

The two men laughed in spite of themselves.

“Better tell the fellow the plain truth,” said Campbell to Thurnall.

“Come out with us, and I will tell you.”  And Campbell threw down the money, and led him off, after he had gulped down his own brandy, and half Tom’s beside.

“What? leave the nepenthe untasted?”

They took him out, and he tucked his arms through theirs, and strutted down Drury Lane.

“The fact is, sir,—­I speak to you, of course, in confidence, as one gentleman to another—­”

Mr. Barker replied by a lofty and gracious bow.

“That his family are exceedingly distressed at his absence, and his wife, who, as you may know, is a lady of high family, dangerously ill; and he cannot be aware of the fact.  This gentleman is the medical man of her family, and I—­I am an intimate friend.  We should esteem it therefore the very greatest service if you would give us any information which—­”

  “Weep no more, gentle shepherds, weep no more;
  For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
  Sunk though he be upon a garret floor,
  With fumes of Morpheus’ crown about his head.”

“Fumes of Morpheus’ crown?” asked Thurnall.

  “That crimson flower which crowns the sleepy god,
  And sweeps the soul aloft, though flesh may nod.”

“He has taken to opium!” said Thurnall to the bewildered Major.  “What I should have expected.”

“God help him! we must save him out of that last lowest deep!” cried Campbell.  “Where is he, sir?”

  “A vow! a vow!  I have a vow in heaven! 
  Why guide the hounds toward the trembling hare? 
  Our Adonais hath drunk poison; Oh! 
  What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
  Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?”

“As I live, sir,” cried Campbell, losing his self-possession in disgust at the fool; “you may rhyme your own nonsense as long as you will, but you shan’t quote the Adonais about that fellow in my presence.”