“I’ll tell you what, sir; ever since you’ve been in this parish you’ve been meddling, you and Mr. Headley too,—­I’ll say it to your faces,—­ I’ll speak the truth to any man, gentle or simple; and that ain’t enough for you, but you must come over that poor half-crazed girl, to set her plaguing honest people, with telling ’em they’ll all be dead in a month, till nobody can eat their suppers in peace:  and that again ain’t enough for you, but you must go to my lord with your—­”

“Hold hard!” quoth Tom.  “Don’t start two hares at once.  Let’s hear that about Miss Harvey again!”

“Miss Harvey?  Why, you should know better than I.”

“Let’s hear what you know.”

“Why, ever since that night Trebooze caught you and her together—­”

“Stop!” said Tom, “that’s a lie.”

“Everybody says so.”

“Then everybody lies, that’s all; and you may say I said so, and take care you don’t say it again yourself.  But what ever since that night?”

“Why, I suppose you come over the poor thing somehow, as you seem minded to do over every one as you can.  But she’s been running up and down the town ever since, preaching to ’em about windilation, and drains, and smells, and cholera, and its being a judgment of the Lord against dirt, till she’s frightened all the women so, that many’s the man as has had to forbid her his house.—­But you know that as well as I.”

“I never heard a word of it before:  but now I have, I’ll give you my opinion on it.  That she is a noble, sensible girl, and that you are all a set of fools who are not worthy of her; and that the greatest fool of the whole is you, Mr. Tardrew.  And when the cholera comes, it will serve you exactly right if you are the first man carried off by it.  Now, sir, you have given me your mind, and I have given you mine, and I do not wish to hear anything more of you.  Good morning!”

“You hold your head mighty high, to be sure, since you’ve had the run of his lordship’s yacht.”

“If you are impertinent, sir, you will repent it.  I shall take care to inform his lordship of this conversation.”

“My dear Thurnall,” said Headley, as Tardrew withdrew, muttering curses, “the old fellow is certainly right on one point.”

“What then?”

“That you have wonderfully changed your tone.  Who was to eat any amount of dirt, if he could but save his influence thereby?”

“I have altered my plans.  I shan’t stay here long:  I shall just see this cholera over, and then vanish.”

“No?”

“Yes.  I cannot sit here quietly, listening to the war-news.  It makes me mad to be up and doing.  I must eastward-ho, and see if trumps will not turn up for me at last.  Why, I know the whole country, half-a-dozen of the languages,—­oh, if I could get some secret-service work!  Go I must.  At worst I can turn my hand to doctoring Bashi-bazouks.”

“My dear Tom, when will you settle down like other men?” cries Claude.