Tom stared his fill at the newcomer, who was attended by several of the habitues of the coffee house, and received their welcome with a languid grace and indifferent goodwill.  He was speedily accommodated with the best seat in the room.  Conversation was hushed to listen to his words; the most fragrant cup of coffee was brought to him by the beauty of the bar herself, and his orders were dispatched with a celerity which was lacking to any other customer.

Small wonder was it that Tom, gazing and marvelling, asked in a whisper of the man next him: 

“Who is it?”

“Lord Claud, of course, you rustic cub,” was the scornful reply, for politeness did not distinguish Tom’s new friends.  “Any fool about town could tell you that much.”

“I know it is Lord Claud,” answered Tom, somewhat nettled; “but who is Lord Claud?  That is what I meant by my question.”

Another laugh, not a whit less scornful, was the reply to this second query.

“He’ll be a clever fellow who tells you that, young greengoose from the country!” was the answer, only that the words used were more offensive, and were followed by the usual garnishing of oaths and by blasphemous allusions to Melchisedec, from which Tom gathered that nothing was known to the world at large as to the parentage or descent of the man they called Lord Claud, and that this title had been bestowed upon him rather as a nickname than because it was his by right.

The babble of talk, hushed at the entrance of the newcomer, began to rise again when he took up one of the journals, and appeared disposed for reading rather than conversation.  Tom, unable to take his eyes off the elegant figure, still continued to ask questions respecting him, but was more puzzled than enlightened by the nature of the replies.

“There had been other Clauds before him,” one of the men remarked.

Another added that it was easy to be rich when the king was made to pay toll.

Slippery Seal wished, with a laugh and an oath, that he were half as slippery as the great Lord Claud; and Bully Bullen remarked that if he could but get such a reputation for duelling, he would play the bully to better purpose than he did now.

This band of four were getting noisy and quarrelsome.  They had been drinking steadily ever since they came in, and their cups of coffee had been tinctured by something much stronger.  They were getting up their energies for their nightly prowls about the city, and thought it no bad start to bait young Tom first.  Of course he had betrayed his ignorance and rusticity in a hundred little ways.  Although he began to understand a little of what passed around him in the interlarded speech of the day, he could not frame his tongue to any adequate imitation of it yet.  He had learnt, alas, to swear in his old life; but there is a fashion even in oaths, and his were too rustic in form to pass muster here.