“But,” said I, with difficulty interrupting him, “how long have you known her father?”

“Known him?  I never saw him.”

“Well, that certainly is cool; and how do you propose making his acquaintance.  Do you intend to make him a ‘particeps criminis’ in the elopement of his own daughter, for a consideration to be hereafter paid out of his own money?”

“Now, Harry, you’ve touched upon the point in which, you must confess, my genius always stood unrivalled—­acknowledge, if you are not dead to gratitude—­acknowledge how often should you have gone supperless to bed in our bivouacs in the Peninsula, had it not been for the ingenuity of your humble servant—­avow, that if mutton was to be had, and beef to be purloined, within a circuit of twenty miles round, our mess certainly kept no fast days.  I need not remind you of the cold morning on the retreat from Burgos, when the inexorable Lake brought five men to the halberds for stealing turkeys, that at the same moment, I was engaged in devising an ox-tail soup, from a heifer brought to our tent in jack-boots the evening before, to escape detection by her foot tracks.”

“True, Jack, I never questioned your Spartan talent; but this affair, time considered, does appear rather difficult.”

“And if it were not, should I have ever engaged in it?  No, no, Harry.  I put all proper value upon the pretty girl, with her two hundred thousand pounds pin-money.  But I honestly own to you, the intrigue, the scheme, has as great charm for me as any part of the transaction.”

“Well, Jack, now for the plan, then!”

“The plan! oh, the plan.  Why, I have several; but since I have seen you, and talked the matter over with you, I have begun to think of a new mode of opening the trenches.”

“Why, I don’t see how I can possibly have admitted a single new ray of light upon the affair.”

“There are you quite wrong.  Just hear me out without interruption, and I’ll explain.  I’ll first discover the locale of this worthy colonel —­’Hydrabad Cottage’ he calls it; good, eh?—­then I shall proceed to make a tour of the immediate vicinity, and either be taken dangerously ill in his grounds, within ten yards of the hall-door, or be thrown from my gig at the gate of his avenue, and fracture my skull; I don’t much care which.  Well, then, as I learn that the old gentleman is the most kind, hospitable fellow in the world, he’ll admit me at once; his daughter will tend my sick couch—­nurse—­read to me; glorious fun, Harry.  I’ll make fierce love to her; and now, the only point to be decided is whether, having partaken of the colonel’s hospitality so freely, I ought to carry her off, or marry her with papa’s consent.  You see there is much to be said for either line of proceeding.”

“I certainly agree with you there; but since you seem to see your way so clearly up to that point, why, I should advise you leaving that an ’open question,’ as the ministers say, when they are hard pressed for an opinion.”