farther the gentleman could not go.  Evan found him sleeping soundly.  How much the poor youth wanted a friend!  Fortune had given him instead a born buffoon; and it is perhaps the greatest evil of a position like Evan’s, that, with cultured feelings, you are likely to meet with none to know you.  Society does not mix well in money-pecking spheres.  Here, however, was John Raikes, and Evan had to make the best of him.

‘Eh?’ yawned Jack, awakened; ’I was dreaming I was Napoleon Bonaparte’s right-hand man.’

‘I want you to be mine for half-an-hour,’ said Evan.

Without replying, the distinguished officer jumped out of bed at a bound, mounted a chair, and peered on tip-toe over the top, from which, with a glance of self-congratulation, he pulled the missing piece of apparel, sighed dejectedly as he descended, while he exclaimed: 

’Safe! but no distinction can compensate a man for this state of intolerable suspicion of everybody.  I assure you, Harrington, I wouldn’t be Napoleon himself—­and I have always been his peculiar admirer—­to live and be afraid of my valet!  I believe it will develop cancer sooner or later in me.  I feel singular pains already.  Last night, after crowning champagne with ale, which produced a sort of French Revolution in my interior—­by the way, that must have made me dream of Napoleon last night, with my lower members in revolt against my head, I had to sit and cogitate for hours on a hiding-place for these-call them what you will.  Depend upon it, Harrington, this world is no such funny affair as we fancy.’

‘Then it is true, that you could let a man play pranks on you,’ said Evan.  ‘I took it for one of your jokes.’

‘Just as I can’t believe that you’re a tailor,’ returned Jack.  ’It ’s not a bit more extraordinary.’

‘But, Jack, if you cause yourself to be contemptible——­’

‘Contemptible!’ cried Jack.  ’This is not the tone I like.  Contemptible! why it’s my eccentricity among my equals.  If I dread the profane vulgar, that only proves that I’m above them.  Odi, etc.  Besides, Achilles had his weak point, and egad, it was when he faced about!  By Jingo!  I wish I’d had that idea yesterday.  I should have behaved better.’

Evan could see that the creature was beginning to rely desperately on his humour.

‘Come,’ he said, ’be a man to-day.  Throw off your motley.  When I met you that night so oddly, you had been acting like a worthy fellow, trying to earn your bread in the best way you could—­’

’And precisely because I met you, of all men, I’ve been going round and round ever since,’ said Jack.  ’A clown or pantaloon would have given me balance.  Say no more.  You couldn’t help it.  We met because we were the two extremes.’

Sighing, ‘What a jolly old inn!’ Raikes rolled himself over in the sheets, and gave two or three snug jolts indicative of his determination to be comfortable while he could.