“More, I tell you, more!” said Elsley, lifting up his head, and looking at it.

“Not more while you are with me.”

“With you!  Who the devil sent you here?”

“John Briggs, John Briggs, if I did not mean you good, should I be here now?  Now do, like a reasonable man, tell me what you intend to do.”

“What is that to you, or any man?” said Elsley, writhing with neuralgia.

“No concern of mine, of course:  but your poor wife—­you must see her.”

“I can’t, I won’t!—­that is, not yet!  I tell you I cannot face the thought of her, much less the sight of her, and her family,—­that Valencia!  I’d rather the earth should open and swallow me!  Don’t talk to me, I say!”

And hiding his face in his hands, he writhed with pain, while Thurnall stood still patiently watching him, as a pointer dog does a partridge.  He had found his game, and did not intend to lose it.

“I am better now; quite well!” said he, as the laudanum began to work.  “Yes!  I’ll go—­that will be it—­go to ——­ at once.  He’ll give me an order for a magazine article; I’ll earn ten pounds, and then off to Italy.”

“If you want ten pounds, my good fellow, you can have them without racking your brains over an article.”  Elsley looked up proudly.

“I do not borrow, sir!”

“Well—­I’ll give you five for those pistols.  They are of no use to you, and I shall want a spare brace for the East.”

“Ah!  I forgot them.  I spent my last money on them,” said he with a shudder; “but I won’t sell them to you at a fancy price—­no dealings between gentleman and gentleman.  I’ll go to a shop, and get for them what they are worth.”

“Very good.  I’ll go with you, if you like.  I fancy I may get you a better price for them than you would yourself:  being rather a knowing one about the pretty little barkers.”  And Tom took his arm, and walked him quietly down into the street.

“If you ever go up those kennel-stairs again, friend,” said he to himself, “my name’s not Tom Thurnall.”

They walked to a gunsmith’s shop in the Strand, where Tom had often dealt, and sold the pistols for some three pounds.

“Now then let’s go into 333, and get a mutton chop.”

“No.”

Elsley was too shy; he was “not fit to be seen.”

“Come to my rooms, then, in the Adelphi, and have a wash and a shave.  It will make you as fresh as a lark again, and then we’ll send out for the eatables, and have a quiet chat.”

Elsley did not say no.  Thurnall took the thing as a matter of course, and he was too weak and tired to argue with him.  Beside, there was a sort of relief in the company of a man who, though he knew all, chatted on to him cheerily and quietly, as if nothing had happened; who at least treated him as a sane man.  From any one else he would have shrunk, lest they should find him out:  but a companion, who knew the worst, at least saved him suspicion and dread.