Mr. Barker shook himself fiercely free of Campbell’s arm, and faced round at him in a fighting attitude.  Campbell stood eyeing him sternly, but at his wit’s end.

“Mr. Barker,” said Tom blandly, “will you have another glass of brandy and water, or shall I call a policeman?”

“Sir,” sputtered he, speaking prose at last, “this gentleman has insulted me!  He has called my poetry nonsense, and my friend a fellow.  And blood shall not wipe out—­what liquor may?”

The hint was sufficient; but ere he had drained another glass, Mr. Barker was decidedly incapable of managing his affairs, much less theirs; and became withal exceedingly quarrelsome, returning angrily to the grievance of Briggs having been called a fellow; in spite of all their entreaties, he talked himself into a passion, and at last, to Campbell’s extreme disgust, rushed out of the bar into the street.

“This is too vexations!  To have kept half-an-hour’s company with such an animal, and then to have him escape me after all!  A just punishment on me for pandering to his drunkenness.”

Tom made no answer, but went quietly to the door, and peeped out.

“Pay for his liquor, Major, and follow.  Keep a few yards behind me; there will be less chance of his recognising us than if he saw us both together.”

“Why, where do you think he’s going?”

“Not home, I can see.  Ten to one that he will go raging off straight to Briggs, to put him on his guard against us.  Just like a drunkard’s cunning it would be.  There, he has turned up that side street.  Now follow me quick.  Oh that he may only keep his legs!”

They gained the bottom of that street before he had turned out of it; and so through another, and another, till they ran him to earth in one of the courts out of St. Martin’s Lane.

Into a doorway he went, and up a stair.  Tom stood listening at the bottom, till he heard the fellow knock at a door far above, and call out in a drunken tone.  Then he beckoned to Campbell, and both, careless of what might follow, ran upstairs, and pushing him aside, entered the room without ceremony.

Their chances of being on the right scent were small enough, considering that, though every one was out of town, there were a million and a half of people in London at that moment; and, unfortunately, at least fifty thousand who would have considered Mr. John Barker a desirable visitor; but somehow, in the excitement of the chase, both had forgotten the chances against them, and the probability that they would have to retire downstairs again, apologising humbly to some wrathful Joseph Buggins, whose convivialities they might have interrupted.  But no; Tom’s cunning had, as usual, played him true; and as they entered the door, they beheld none other than the lost Elsley Vavasour, alias John Briggs.

Major Campbell advanced bowing, hat in hand, with a courteous apology on his lips.