Once inside, in the half light of a narrow hallway, a variety of noises greeted our ears,—­laughter from above and below, interspersed with oaths; the click of billiard balls, and the occasional hammering of a pack of cards on a bare table before the shuffle.  The air was close almost to suffocation, and out of the coffee room, into which I glanced, came a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke.

“Why, my masters, why so glum?” said the bailiff; “my inn is not such a bad place, and you’ll find ample good company here, I promise you.”

And he led us into a dingy antechamber littered with papers, on every one of which, I daresay, was written a tragedy.  Then he inscribed our names, ages, descriptions, and the like in a great book, when we followed him up three flights to a low room under the eaves, having but one small window, and bare of furniture save two narrow cots for beds, a broken chair, and a cracked mirror.  He explained that cash boarders got better, and added that we might be happy we were not in the Fleet.

“We dine at two here, gentlemen, and sup at eight.  This is not the Star and Garter,” said he as he left us.

It was the captain who spoke first, though he swallowed twice before the words came out.

“Come, Richard, come, laddie,” he said, “’tis no so bad it micht-na be waur.  We’ll mak the maist o’ it.”

“I care not for myself, Captain Paul,” I replied, marvelling the more at him, “but to think that I have landed you here, that this is my return for your sacrifice.”

“Hoots!  How was ye to foresee Mr. Manners was a blellum?” And he broke into threats which, if Mr. Marmaduke had heard and comprehended, would have driven him into the seventh state of fear.  “Have you no other friends in London?” he asked, regaining his English.

I shook my head.  Then came—­a question I dreaded.

“And Mr. Manners’s family?”

“I would rather remain here for life,” I said, “than to them now.”

For pride is often selfish, my dears, and I did not reflect that if I remained, the captain would remain likewise.

“Are they all like Mr. Manners?”

“That they are not,” I returned with more heat than was necessary; “his wife is goodness itself, and his daughter—­” Words failed me, and I reddened.

“Ah, he has a daughter, you say,” said the captain, casting a significant look at me and beginning to pace the little room.  He was keener than I thought, this John Paul.

If it were not so painful a task, my dears, I would give you here some notion of what a London sponging-house was in the last century.  Comyn has heard me tell of it, and I have seen Bess cry over the story.  Gaming was the king-vice of that age, and it filled these places to overflowing.  Heaven help a man who came into the world with that propensity in the early days of King George the Third.  Many, alas, acquired it before they were come to years of discretion.