Foster looked at him earnestly, then turned away, and paced the room twice with the same steady and considerate pace with which he had entered it; then suddenly came back, and extended his hand to Michael Lambourne, saying, “Be not wroth with me, good Mike; I did but try whether thou hadst parted with aught of thine old and honourable frankness, which your enviers and backbiters called saucy impudence.”

“Let them call it what they will,” said Michael Lambourne, “it is the commodity we must carry through the world with us.—­Uds daggers!  I tell thee, man, mine own stock of assurance was too small to trade upon.  I was fain to take in a ton or two more of brass at every port where I touched in the voyage of life; and I started overboard what modesty and scruples I had remaining, in order to make room for the stowage.”

“Nay, nay,” replied Foster, “touching scruples and modesty, you sailed hence in ballast.  But who is this gallant, honest Mike?—­is he a Corinthian—­a cutter like thyself?”

“I prithee, know Master Tressilian, bully Foster,” replied Lambourne, presenting his friend in answer to his friend’s question, “know him and honour him, for he is a gentleman of many admirable qualities; and though he traffics not in my line of business, at least so far as I know, he has, nevertheless, a just respect and admiration for artists of our class.  He will come to in time, as seldom fails; but as yet he is only a neophyte, only a proselyte, and frequents the company of cocks of the game, as a puny fencer does the schools of the masters, to see how a foil is handled by the teachers of defence.”

“If such be his quality, I will pray your company in another chamber, honest Mike, for what I have to say to thee is for thy private ear.—­Meanwhile, I pray you, sir, to abide us in this apartment, and without leaving it; there be those in this house who would be alarmed by the sight of a stranger.”

Tressilian acquiesced, and the two worthies left the apartment together, in which he remained alone to await their return. [See Note 1.  Foster, Lambourne, and the Black Bear.]

CHAPTER IV.

     Not serve two masters?—­Here’s a youth will try it—­
     Would fain serve God, yet give the devil his due;
     Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy,
     And returns his thanks devoutly when ’tis acted,—­old play.

The room into which the Master of Cumnor Place conducted his worthy visitant was of greater extent than that in which they had at first conversed, and had yet more the appearance of dilapidation.  Large oaken presses, filled with shelves of the same wood, surrounded the room, and had, at one time, served for the arrangement of a numerous collection of books, many of which yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with dust, deprived of their costly clasps and bindings, and tossed together in heaps upon the shelves, as things altogether disregarded, and abandoned to the pleasure of every spoiler.  The very presses themselves seemed to have incurred the hostility of those enemies of learning who had destroyed the volumes with which they had been heretofore filled.  They were, in several places, dismantled of their shelves, and otherwise broken and damaged, and were, moreover, mantled with cobwebs and covered with dust.