me to play for a tenner—­but I won’t without having the money in me pocket.  Tobias Clutterbuck may be poor, me dear friend, but”—­and here he puffed out his chest and tapped on it with his round, sponge-like fist—­“he’s honest, and pays debts of honour on the nail.  No, sir, there’s no one can say a word against Tobias, except that he’s a half-pay old fool with more heart than brains.  However,” he added, suddenly dropping the sentimental and coming back to the practical, “if you, me dear boy, can obloige me with the money until to-morrow morning, I’ll play Jorrocks with pleasure.  There’s not many men that I’d ask such a favour of, and even from you I’d never accept anything more than a mere timporary convanience.”

“You may stake your life on that,” Ezra Girdlestone said with a sneer, looking sullenly down and tracing figures with the end of his stick on the stone steps.  “You’ll never get the chance.  I make it a rule never to lend any one money, either for short or long periods.”

“And you won’t let me have this throifling accommodation?”

“No,” the young man said decisively.

For a moment the major’s brick-coloured, weather-beaten face assumed an even darker tint, and his small dark eyes looked out angrily from under his shaggy brows at his youthful companion.  He managed to suppress the threatened explosion, however, and burst into a loud roar of laughter.

“’Pon me sowl!” he wheezed, poking the young man in the ribs with his stick, an implement which he had grasped a moment before as though he meditated putting it to a less pacific use, “you young divils of business-men are too much for poor old Tobias.  Ged, sir, to think of being stuck in the mud for the want of a paltry tenner!  Tommy Heathcote will laugh when he hears of it.  You know Tommy of the 81st?  He gave me good advice:  ’Always sew a fifty-pound note into the lining of each waistcoat you’ve got.  Then you can’t go short.’  Tried it once, and, be George! if me demned man-servant didn’t stale that very waistcoat and sell it for six and sixpence.  You’re not going, are you?”

“Yes; I’m due in the City.  The governor leaves at four.  Good-bye.  Shall I see you to-night?”

“Card-room, as per usual,” quoth the clean-shaven warrior.  He looked after the retreating figure of his late companion with anything but a pleasant expression upon his face.  The young man happened to glance round as he was half-way down the street, on which the major smiled after him paternally, and gave a merry flourish with his stick.

As the old soldier stood on the top of the club steps, pompous, pigeon-chested, and respectable, posing himself as though he had been placed there for the inspection of passers-by as a sample of the aristocracy within, he made several attempts to air his grievances to passing members touching the question of the expectant Jorrocks and the missing purse.  Beyond, however, eliciting many sallies of wit from the younger spirits,