Gideon and Julia sprang apart with wonderful alacrity; the latter annoyed to observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield.  That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch.  He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the matchmaker softened his heart.

‘Well, I call that cool,’ he repeated; ’you seem to count very securely upon Uncle Ned.  But look here, Gid, I thought I had told you to keep away?’

‘To keep away from Maidenhead,’ replied Gid.  ’But how should I expect to find you here?’

‘There is something in that,’ Mr Bloomfield admitted.  ’You see I thought it better that even you should be ignorant of my address; those rascals, the Finsburys, would have wormed it out of you.  And just to put them off the scent I hoisted these abominable colours.  But that is not all, Gid; you promised me to work, and here I find you playing the fool at Padwick.’

‘Please, Mr Bloomfield, you must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,’ said Julia.  ‘Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.’

‘What’s this, Gid?’ enquired the uncle.  ’Have you been fighting? or is it a bill?’

These, in the opinion of the Squirradical, were the two misfortunes incident to gentlemen; and indeed both were culled from his own career.  He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a friend’s paper; it had cost him a cool thousand; and the friend had gone about with the fear of death upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the oaken staff.  As for fighting, the Squirradical was always on the brink of it; and once, when (in the character of president of a Radical club) he had cleared out the hall of his opponents, things had gone even further.  Mr Holtum, the Conservative candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness, was prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield.  ’I will swear to it in any court—­it was the hand of that brute that struck me down,’ he was reported to have said; and when he was thought to be sinking, it was known that he had made an ante-mortem statement in that sense.  It was a cheerful day for the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his brewery.

‘It’s much worse than that,’ said Gideon; ’a combination of circumstances really providentially unjust—­a—­in fact, a syndicate of murderers seem to have perceived my latent ability to rid them of the traces of their crime.  It’s a legal study after all, you see!’ And with these words, Gideon, for the second time that day, began to describe the adventures of the Broadwood Grand.

‘I must write to The Times,’ cried Mr Bloomfield.