“Good swordsmanship is an art to be greatly prized.  It makes a man respected and feared.  It gives him distinction with his fellows.  Besides, one never knows when it may be useful for the saving of one’s skin.  A man who can wield the rapier with skill, master his horse as you can, honest Tom, and shoot fair and true with pistol and musket, may go through life to a merry tune, and even die at last in his bed, if he has a mind for so respectable an end!”

The days were shortening to their darkest by now.  Snow fell in the streets, and made walking disagreeable.  Tom found it pleasant to ride along beside Lord Claud, mounted upon the mettlesome mare, Nell Gwynne, who appeared kept just now for his especial use and behoof.  He still spent his Sundays at his lodgings; but pretty Rosamund was not always able to come across when the snow lay deep along the country roads.  Tom began to think less of her again, and more of his patron and friend; being, as may have already been gleaned, a youth of impressionable nature, easily moulded by the character of his associates, although not without a latent firmness of will which might develop into sterling metal in time, though, perhaps, not until the admixture of dross had been purged away by the action of the furnace of trial.

All London was now agog over the return of the victor of Blenheim.  The great Duke of Marlborough had been upon his way home for some time.  In the middle of December he reached London, and took his seat in the House of Lords; and it was said that early in the next year there would be a monstrous fine procession from the Tower to Westminster, in which all the trophies of war would be solemnly paraded.

Tom was as excited as anybody over all this, and as eager to obtain sight of the great Duke.  Lord Claud had promised that he should not only see him, but be one of the same company at some fine house where he would show himself.  Tom had often been to grand enough houses already with his friend; but it seemed to him overmuch to suppose that he could be introduced into any company of which the Duke of Marlborough was to be a member.

Lord Claud, however, was not given to vain boasting.  The open-house festivities of Christmas were approaching.  He himself had won the entree to an extraordinary number of fashionable houses; and this evening here was Tom, come with his patron to a nobleman’s dwelling, standing in the crowd of fashionable grandees, all in a flutter of excitement to see the hero of the hour at close quarters.

“Keep your eyes open, Tom; you cannot fail to see him as he passes through the room.  You are lucky in being able to look over the heads of all the crowd.  No tiptoeing lady can intercept your view even with her towering headdress!”

This was hardly true; for there were ladies whose headdresses were of such monstrous proportions that the dame of five feet stood seven feet high, taking the heels of her shoes and the tower on her head into consideration!  But luckily these extravagant follies were confined only to the few, the majority of the ladies being content with a headdress of more moderate dimensions.