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                           MY LORD DUKE

                         BY E. W. HORNUNG


    NEW YORK
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
    1897

    COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    Norwood Press
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
    Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




CONTENTS


       I. THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY                     1

      II. "HAPPY JACK"                              16

     III. A CHANCE LOST                             31

      IV. NOT IN THE PROGRAMME                      44

       V. WITH THE ELECT                            63

      VI. A NEW LEAF                                77

     VII. THE DUKE'S PROGRESS                       90

    VIII. THE OLD ADAM                             105

      IX. AN ANONYMOUS LETTER                      122

       X. "DEAD NUTS"                              137

      XI. THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTIETH               151

     XII. THE WRONG MAN                            163

    XIII. THE INTERREGNUM                          180

     XIV. JACK AND HIS MASTER                      189

      XV. END OF THE INTERREGNUM                   199

     XVI. "LOVE THE GIFT"                          215

    XVII. AN ANTI-TOXINE                           223

   XVIII. HECKLING A MINISTER                      233

     XIX. THE CAT AND THE MOUSE                    244

      XX. "LOVE THE DEBT"                          257

     XXI. THE BAR SINISTER                         266

    XXII. DE MORTUIS                               282




MY LORD DUKE




CHAPTER I

THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY


The Home Secretary leant his golf-clubs against a chair. His was the
longest face of all.

"I am only sorry it should have come now," said Claude apologetically.

"Just as we were starting for the links! Our first day, too!" muttered
the Home Secretary.

"_I_ think of Claude," remarked his wife. "I can never tell you, Claude,
how much I feel for you! We shall miss you dreadfully, of course; but we
couldn't expect to enjoy ourselves after this; and I think, in the
circumstances, that you are quite right to go up to town at once."

"Why?" cried the Home Secretary warmly. "What good can he do in the
Easter holidays? Everybody will be away; he'd much better come with me
and fill his lungs with fresh air."

"I can never tell you how much I feel for you," repeated Lady Caroline
to Claude Lafont.

"Nor I," said Olivia. "It's too horrible! I don't believe it. To think
of their finding him after all! I don't believe they _have_ found him.
You've made some mistake, Claude. You've forgotten your code; the cable
really means that they've _not_ found him, and are giving up the
search!"

Claude Lafont shook his head.

"There may be something in what Olivia says," remarked the Home
Secretary. "The mistake may have been made at the other end. It would
bear talking over on the links."

Claude shook his head again.

"We have no reason to suppose there has been a mistake at all, Mr.
Sellwood. Cripps is not the kind of man to make mistakes; and I can
swear to my code. The word means, 'Duke found--I sail with him at
once.'"

"An Australian Duke!" exclaimed Olivia.

"A blackamoor, no doubt," said Lady Caroline with conviction.

"Your kinsman, in any case," said Claude Lafont, laughing; "and my
cousin; and the head of the family from this day forth."

"It was madness!" cried Lady Caroline softly. "Simple madness--but then
all you poets _are_ mad! Excuse me, Claude, but you remind me of the
Lafont blood in my own veins--you make it boil. I feel as if I never
could forgive you! To turn up your nose at one of the oldest titles in
the three kingdoms; to think twice about a purely hypothetical heir at
the antipodes; and actually to send out your solicitor to hunt him up!
If that was not Quixotic lunacy, I should like to know what is?"

The Right Honourable George Sellwood took a new golf-ball from his
pocket, and bowed his white head mournfully as he stripped off the
tissue paper.

"My dear Lady Caroline, _noblesse oblige_--and a man must do his obvious
duty," he heard Claude saying, in his slightly pedantic fashion.
"Besides, I should have cut a very sorry figure had I jumped at the
throne, as it were, and sat there until I was turned out. One knew there
_had_ been an heir in Australia; the only thing was to find out if he
was still alive; and Cripps has done so. I'm bound to say I had given
him up. Cripps has written quite hopelessly of late. He must have found
the scent and followed it up during the last six weeks; but in another
six he will be here to tell us all about it--and we shall see the Duke.
Meanwhile, pray don't waste your sympathies upon _me_. To be perfectly
frank, this is in many ways a relief to me--I am only sorry it has come
now. You know my tastes; but I have hitherto found it expedient to make
a little secret of my opinions. Now, however, there can be no harm in my
saying that they are not entirely in harmony with the hereditary
principle. You hold up your hands, dear Lady Caroline, but I assure you
that my seat in the Upper Chamber would have been a seat of
conscientious thorns. In fact I have been in a difficulty, ever since my
grandfather's death, which I am very thankful to have removed. On the
other hand, I love my--may I say my art? And luckily I have enough to
cultivate the muse on, at all events, the best of oatmeal; so I am not
to be pitied. A good quatrain, Olivia, is more to me than coronets; and
the society of my literary friends is dearer to my heart than that of
all the peers in Christendom."

Claude was a poet; when he forgot this fact he was also an excellent
fellow. His affectations ended with his talk. In appearance he was
distinctly desirable. He had long, clean limbs, a handsome, shaven,
mild-eyed face, and dark hair as short as another's. He would have made
an admirable Duke.

Mr. Sellwood looked up a little sharply from his dazzling new golf-ball.

"Why go to town at all?" said he.

"Well, the truth is, I have been in a false position all these months,"
replied Claude, forgetting his poetry and becoming natural at once. "I
want to get out of it without a day's unnecessary delay. This thing must
be made public."

The statesman considered.

"I suppose it must," said he, judicially.

"Undoubtedly," said Lady Caroline, looking from Olivia to Claude. "The
sooner the better."

"Not at all," said the Home Secretary. "It has kept nearly a year.
Surely it can keep another week? Look here, my good fellow. I come down
here expressly to play golf with you, and you want to bunker me in the
very house! I take it for the week for nothing else, and you want to
desert me the very first morning. You shan't do either, so that's all
about it."

"You're a perfect tyrant!" cried Lady Caroline. "I'm ashamed of you,
George; and I hope Claude will do exactly as he likes. _I_ shall be
sorry enough to lose him, goodness knows!"

"So shall I," said Olivia simply.

Lady Caroline shuddered.

"Look at the day!" cried Mr. Sellwood, jumping up with his pink face
glowing beneath his virile silver hair. "Look at the sea! Look at the
sand! Look at the sea-breeze lifting the very carpet under our feet! Was
there ever such a day for golf?"

Claude wavered visibly.

"Come on," said Mr. Sellwood, catching up his clubs. "I'm awfully sorry
for you, my boy. But come on!"

"You will have to give in, Claude," said Olivia, who loved her father.

Lady Caroline shrugged her shoulders.

"Of course," said she, "I hope he will; still I don't think our own
selfish considerations should detain him against his better judgment."

"I am eager to see Cripps's partners," said Claude vacillating. "They
may know more about it."

"And solicitors are such trying people," remarked Lady Caroline
sympathetically; "one always does want to see them personally, to know
what they really mean."

"That's what I feel," said Claude.

"But what on earth has he to consult them about?" demanded the Home
Secretary. "Everything will keep--except the golf. Besides, my dear
fellow, you are perfectly safe in the hands of Maitland, Hollis, Cripps
and Company. A fine steady firm, and yet pushing too. I recollect they
were the first solicitors in London--"

"Were!" said his wife significantly.

"To supply us with typewritten briefs, my love. Now there is little
else. In such hands, my dear Claude, your interests are quite
undramatically safe."

"Still," said Claude, "it's an important matter; and I am, after all,
for the moment, the head of--"

"I'll tell you what you are," cried the politician, with a burst of that
hot brutality which had formerly made him the wholesome terror of the
Junior Bar; "you're a confounded minor Cockney poet! If you want to go
back to your putrid midnight oil, go back to it; if you want to get out
of the golf, get out of it! I'm off. I shouldn't like to be rude to you,
Claude, my boy, and I may be if I remain. No doubt I shall be able to
pick up somebody down at the links."

Claude struck his flag.

A minute later, Olivia, from the broad bay window, watched the lank,
handsome poet and the sturdy, white-haired statesman hurrying along the
Marina arm-in-arm; both in knickerbockers and Norfolk jackets; and each
carrying a quiverful of golf-clubs in his outer hand.

The girl was lost in thought.

"Olivia," said a voice behind her, "your father behaved like a brute!"

"I didn't think so; it was all in good part. And it will do him so much
good!"

"Do whom?"

"Poor Claude! Of course he is dreadfully cut up."

"Then why did he pretend to be pleased?"

"That was his pluck. He took it splendidly. I never admired him so
much!"

Lady Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again without a
word. Her daughter's slight figure was silhouetted against the middle
window of the bow; the sun put a golden crown upon the fair young head;
yet the head was bent, and the girl's whole attitude one of pity and of
thought. Lady Caroline Sellwood rose quietly, and left the room.

That species of low cunning, which was one of her Ladyship's traits, had
placed her for the moment in a rather neat dilemma. Claude Lafont had
cast poet's eyes at Olivia for months and years; and for weeks and
months Olivia's mother had wished there were less poetry and more
passion in the composition of that aristocrat. He would not say what
nobody else, not even Lady Caroline, could say for him. He was content
to dangle and admire; he had called Olivia his "faery queen," with his
lips and with his pen, in private and in print; but he had betrayed no
immediate desire to call her his wife. Lady Caroline had recommended him
to marry, and he had denounced marriage as "the death of romance." Quite
sure in her own mind that she was dealing with none other than the Duke
of St. Osmund's, it was her Ladyship who had planned the present small
party (which her distinguished husband would call a "foursome") for the
Easter Recess. Flatly disbelieving in the existence of the alleged
Australian heir, she had seen the merit of engaging Olivia to Claude
before the latter assumed his title in the eyes of the world. That the
title was his to assume, when he liked, had been the opinion of all the
Lafonts, save Claude himself, from the very first; and, when it suited
her, Lady Caroline Sellwood was very well pleased to consider herself a
Lafont. In point of fact, her mother had borne that illustrious name
before her marriage with the impecunious Earl Clennell of Ballycawley;
and Lady Caroline was herself a great-granddaughter of the sixth Duke of
St. Osmund's.

The sixth Duke (who exerted himself to make the second half of the last
century rather wickeder than the first) had two sons, of whom her
present Ladyship's grandfather was the younger. The elder became the
seventh Duke, and begot the eighth (and most respectable) Duke of St.
Osmund's--the aged peer lately deceased. The eighth Duke, again, had but
two sons, who both predeceased him. These two sons were, respectively,
Claude's father and the unmentionable Marquis of Maske. The Marquis was
a man after the heart of his worst ancestor, a fascinating blackguard,
neither more nor less. At twenty-four he had raised the temperature of
his native air to a degree incompatible with his own safety; and had
fled the country never to return. Word of his death was received from
Australia in the year 1866. He had died horribly, from thirst in the
wilderness, and yet a proper compassion was impossible even after that.
For the news was accompanied by a letter from the dead man's
hand--scrawled at his last gasp, and pinned with his knife to the tree
under which the body was found--yet composed in a vein of revolting
cynicism, and containing further news of the most embarrassing
description. The Marquis was leaving behind him--somewhere in
Australia--at the moment he really could not say where--a small
Viscount Dillamore to inherit ultimately the title and estates. He gave
no dates, but said his wife was dead. To the best of his belief,
however, the lad was alive; and might be known by the French eagle of
the Lafonts, which the father had himself tattooed upon his little
chest.

This was all the clue which had been left to Claude, to follow on a bad
man's bare word, or to ignore at his own discretion. For reasons best
known to himself, the old Duke had taken no steps to discover the little
Marquis. Unluckily, however, his late Grace had not been entirely
himself for many years before his death; and those reasons had never
transpired. Claude, on the other hand, was a man of fastidious
temperament, a person of infinite scruples, with a morbid horror of the
incorrect. He would spend half the morning deciding between a semicolon
and a full stop; and he was consistently conscientious in matters of
real moment, as, for example, in that of his marriage. He had been
asking himself, for quite a twelve-month, whether he really loved
Olivia; he had no intention of asking _her_ until he was quite convinced
on the point. To such a man there was but one course possible on the old
Duke's death. And Claude had taken it with the worst results.

"He has no sympathy for _me_," said Lady Caroline bitterly, as she went
upstairs. "He has cut his own throat, and there's an end of it; except
that if he thinks he's going to marry any daughter of mine, after this,
he is very much mistaken."

It was extremely mortifying all the same; to have prepared the ground so
carefully, to have arranged every preliminary for a match which had now
to be abandoned altogether; and worse still, to have turned away half
the eligible young men in town for the sake of a Duke who was not a Duke
at all. Lady Caroline Sellwood had three daughters. The eldest had made
a good, solid, military marriage, and enjoyed in India a social position
that was not unworthy of her. The second daughter had not done quite so
well; still, her husband, the Rev. Francis Freke, was a divine whose
birth was better than his attainments, so that there was every chance of
seeing his little legs in gaiters before either foot was in his grave.
But Olivia was her youngest ("my ewe lamb," Lady Caroline used to call
her, although no other kind had graced her fold), and in her mother's
opinion she was fitted for a better fate than that which had befallen
either of her sisters. Olivia was the prettiest of the three. Her little
fair head, "sunning over with curls," as Claude never tired of saying,
was made by nature with a self-evident view to strawberry-leaves and
twinkling tiaras. And Lady Caroline meant it to wear them yet.

She had done her best to encourage Claude in his inclination to run up
to town at once. The situation at the seaside had become charged with
danger. Not only did it appear to Lady Caroline that the poet was at
last satisfied with the state of his own affections, but she had reason
to fear that Claude Lafont would have a better chance with Olivia than
would the Duke of St. Osmund's. The child was peculiar. She had read too
much, and there was a suspiciously sentimental strain in her. Her acute
mother did not imagine her "vulgarly in love" (as she called it) with
the aesthetic Claude; but she had heard him tell the girl that "pity from
her" was "more dear than that from another"; and it was precisely this
pity which Lady Caroline now dreaded as fervently as she would have
welcomed it the day before. Her stupid husband had outwitted her in the
matter of Claude's departure. Lady Caroline was hardly at the top of the
stairs before she had made up the masterly mind which she considered at
least a match for her stupid husband's. He would not allow her to get
rid of Claude? Very well; nothing simpler. She would get rid of Olivia
instead.

The means suggested itself almost as quickly as the end.

Lady Caroline took a little walk to the post-office, and said she had
been on the pier. In a couple of hours a telegram arrived from Mrs.
Freke, begging Olivia to go to her at once. Lady Caroline was apparently
overwhelmed with surprise. But she despatched her ewe lamb by the next
train.

"Olivia, I won both rounds!" called out the Home Secretary, when he
strutted in towards evening, pink and beaming. Claude also looked the
better and the brighter for his day; but Lady Caroline took the
brightness out of him in an instant; and the Home Secretary beamed no
more that night.

"It is no use your calling Olivia," said her Ladyship calmly; "by this
time she must be a hundred miles away. You needn't look so startled,
George. You know the state to which poor Francis reduces himself by the
end of Lent, and you know that dear Mary's baby is not thriving as it
ought. I shouldn't wonder if he makes _it_ fast, too! At all events
Mary telegraphed for Olivia this morning, and I let her go. Now it's no
use being angry with any of us! With a young baby and a half-starved
husband it was a very natural request. There's the telegram on the
mantelpiece for you to see for yourself what she says."




CHAPTER II

"HAPPY JACK"


A dilettante in letters, a laggard in love, and a pedant in much of his
speech, Claude Lafont was nevertheless possessed of certain graces of
the heart and head which entitled him at all events to the kindly
consideration of his friends. He had enthusiasm and some soul; he had an
open hand and an essentially simple mind. These were the merits of the
man. They were less evident than his foibles, which, indeed, continually
obscured them. He would have been the better for one really bad fault:
but nature had not salted him with a single vice.

Unpopular at Eton, he had found his feet perhaps a little too firmly at
Oxford. There his hair had grown long and his views outrageous. Had the
old Duke of St. Osmund's been in his right mind at the time, he would
certainly have quitted it at the report of some of his grandson's
contributions to the university debates. Claude, however, had the
courage of his most extravagant opinions, and even at Oxford he was a
man whom it was possible to respect. The era of Toynbee Hall and a
gentlemanly, kid-gloved Socialism came a little later; there were other
and intermediate phases, into which it is unnecessary to enter. Claude
came through them all with two things, at least, as good as new: his
ready enthusiasm and his excellent heart.

Whether he really did view the new twist in his life with the
satisfaction which he professed is an open and immaterial question; all
that is certain or important is the fact that he did not permit himself
to repine. He was never in better spirits than in the six weeks'
interval between the receipt of Mr. Cripps's cable and that gentleman's
arrival with the new Duke. Claude divided the time between the proofs of
his new volume of poems and conscientious preparations for the proper
reception of his noble cousin. He had the mansion in Belgrave Square,
which had fallen of late years into disuse, elaborately done up,
repapered, and fitted throughout with new hangings and the electric
light. He felt it his duty to hand over the house in a cleanly and
habitable state; and he was accustomed to work his duty rather hard. He
ran down to Maske Towers, the principal family seat, repeatedly, and had
certain renovations carried out as far as possible under his own eye. In
every direction he did more than he need have done. And so the time
passed very busily, quite happily, and with an interest that was kept
green to the last by the utter absence of any shred of information
concerning the ninth Duke of St. Osmund's.

Claude had even no idea as to whether he was a married man. So he
legislated for a wife and family. And his worst visions were of a
hulking, genial, sheep-farming Duke, with a tribe of very terrible
little Lords and Ladies, duly frightened of their gigantic father, but
paying not the slightest attention to the anaemic Duchess who all day
scolded them through her freckled nose.

Mr. Cripps's letters continued to arrive by each week's mail; but they
were still written with a shake of the head and a growing deprecation of
the wild-goose chase in which the lawyer now believed himself to be
unworthily engaged. Towards the end of May, however, the letters
stopped. The last one was written on the eve of an expedition up the
country, on a mere off-chance, to find out more about one John
Dillamore, whom Mr. Cripps had heard of as a resident of the Riverina.
Claude Lafont knew well what had come of that off-chance. It had turned
the tide of his life. But no letter came from the Riverina; the next
communication was a telegram from Brindisi, saying they had left the
ship and were travelling overland; and the next after that, another
telegram stating the hour at which they hoped to land at Dover.

Claude Lafont had just time enough to put on his hat, to stop the hansom
for an instant at the house in Belgrave Square, and to catch the 12.0
from Victoria.

It was a lovely day in early June. There was neither a cloud in the sky
nor the white crest of a wave out at sea; the one was as serenely blue
as the other; and the _Calais-Douvre_ rode in with a high-bred calm and
dignity all in key with the occasion. Claude boarded her before he had
any right, with a sudden dereliction of his characteristic caution. And
there was old Cripps, sunburnt and grim, with a soft felt hat on his
head, and a strange spasmodic twitching at the corners of the mouth.

"Here you are!" cried Claude, gripping hands. "Well, where is he?"

The lawyer's lips went in and out, and a rough-looking bystander
chuckled audibly.

"One thing quickly," whispered Claude: "is he a married man?"

"No, he isn't."

The bystander laughed outright. Claude favoured him with a haughty
glance.

"His servant, I presume?"

"No," said Cripps hoarsely. "I must introduce you. The Duke of St.
Osmund's--your kinsman, Mr. Claude Lafont."

Claude felt the painful pressure of a horny fist, and gasped.

"Proud to meet you, mister," said the Duke.

"So delighted to meet and welcome _you_, Duke," said Claude faintly.

"I'm afraid I'm a bit of a larrikin," continued the Duke. "You'd have
done as well to leave me where I was--but now I'm here you've got to
call me Jack."

"You knew, of course, what would happen sooner or later?" said Claude,
with a sickly smile.

"Not me. My colonial oath, I did _not_! Never dreamt of it till I seen
_him_"--with a jerk of his wideawake towards Mr. Cripps. It was a very
different felt hat from that gentleman's; the crown rose like a
sugar-loaf, nine inches from the head; the brim was nearly as many
inches wide; and where the felt touched the temples it was stained
through and through with ancient perspiration.

"And I can't sight it now!" added his Grace.

"Nevertheless it's true," said Mr. Cripps.

Claude was taking in the matted beard, the peeled nose, and the round
shoulders of the ninth Duke. He was a bushman from top to toe.

"What luggage have you?" exclaimed Claude, with a sudden effort. "We
must get it ashore."

"This is all," said the Duke, with a grin.

It lay on the deck at their feet: a long cylinder whose outer case was
an old blue blanket, very neatly rolled and strapped; an Australian
saddle, with enormous knee-pads, black with age; and an extraordinary
cage like a rabbit-hutch. The cage was full of cats. The Duke insisted
on carrying it ashore himself.

"This _is_ the man?" whispered Claude, jealously, to Mr. Cripps.

"The man himself; there's an eagle on his chest as large as life."

"But it might be a coincidence----"

"It might be, but it isn't," replied Cripps shortly. "He's the Duke all
right; the papers I shall show you are quite conclusive. I own he
doesn't look the part. He's not tractable. He would come as he is. I
heaved one old hat overboard; but he had a worse in his swag. However,
no one on board knew who he was. I took care of that."

"God bless you, Cripps!" said Claude Lafont.

He had reserved a first-class carriage. The Duke took up half of it with
his cat-cage, which he stoutly declined to trust out of his sight. There
were still a few minutes before the train would start. Claude and Cripps
exchanged sympathetic glances.

"I think we ought to drink the Duke's health," said Claude, who for once
felt the need of a stimulant himself.

"I think so too," said Mr. Cripps.

"Then make 'em lock the door," stipulated his Grace. "I wouldn't risk my
cats being shook, not for drinks as long as your leg!"

A grinning guard came forward with his key. The Duke "mistered" him, and
mentioned where his cats came from as he got out.

"Very kind of you to shout for me," he continued as they filed into the
refreshment room; "but why the blazes don't you call me Jack? Happy
Jack's my name, that's what they used to call me up the bush. I'm not
going to stop being Jack, or happy either, 'cause I'm a Dook; if I did
I'd jolly soon sling it. Now, my dear, what are you givin' us? Why don't
you let me help myself, like they do up the bush? English fashion, is
it? And you call that drop a nobbler, do you, in the old country? Well,
well, here's fun!"

The Duke's custodians were not sorry to get him back beside his cats.
They were really glad when the train started. The Duke was in high
spirits. The whisky had loosened his tongue.

"Like cats, old man?" he inquired of Claude. "Then I hope you'll make
friends with mine. They were my only mates, year in, year out, up at the
hut. I wasn't going to leave 'em there when they'd stood by me so long;
not likely; so here they are. See that black 'un in the corner? I call
her Black Maria, and that's her kitten. She went and had a large family
at sea, but this poor little beggar's the only one what lived to tell
the tale. That great big Tom, he's the father. I don't think much of
Tom, but it would have been a shame to leave him behind. No, sir, my
favourite's the little tortoise-shell with the game leg. He got cotched
in a rabbit trap last shearing-time; he's the most adventurous little
cat that ever was, so I call him Livingstone. I've known him explore
five miles from the hut, when there wasn't a drop of water or a blade of
feed in the paddicks, and yet come back as fat as butter. A little
caution, I tell you! Out you come, Livingstone!"

Claude thought he had never seen a more ill-favoured animal. To call it
tortoise-shell was to misuse the word. It was simply yellow; it ran on
three legs; and its nose had been recently scarified by an enemy's
claws.

"No, I'm full up of Tom," pursued the Duke, fondling his pet. "Look what
he done on board to Livingstone's nose! I nearly slung him over the
side. Poor little puss, then, poor little puss! You may well purr, old
toucher; there's a live Lord scratching your head."

"Meaning me?" said Claude genially; there was a kindness in the rugged
face, as it bent over the little yellow horror, that appealed to the
poet.

"Meaning you, of course."

"But I'm not one."

"You're not? What a darned shame! Why, you ought to be a Dook. You'd
make a better one than me!"

The family solicitor was half-hidden behind that morning's _Times_; as
Jack spoke, he hid himself entirely. Claude, for his part, saw nothing
to laugh at. The Duke's face was earnest. The Duke's eyes were dark and
kind. Like Claude himself, he had the long Lafont nose, though sun and
wind had peeled it red; and a pair of shaggy brown eyebrows gave
strength at all events to the hairy face. Claude was thinking that
half-an-hour at Truefitt's, a pot of vaseline, and the best attentions
of his own tailors in Maddox Street would make a new man of Happy Jack.
Not that his suit was on a par with his abominable wideawake. He could
not have worn these clothes in the bush. They were obviously his best;
and, as obviously, ready-made.

Happy Jack was meantime apostrophising his pet.

"Ah! but you was with me when that there gentleman found me, wasn't you,
Livingstone? You should tell the other gentleman about that. We never
thought we was a Dook, did we? We thought ourselves a blooming ordinary
common man. My colonial oath, and so we are! But you recollect that last
bu'st of ours, Livingstone? I mean the time we went to knock down the
thirty-one pound cheque what never got knocked down properly at all. We
had a rare thirst on us----"

Mr. Cripps in his corner smacked down the _Times_ on his knees.

"Look there!" he cried. "Did ever you see such grass as that, Jack?
You've nothing like it in New South Wales. I declare it does my old
heart good to see an honest green field again!"

Jack looked out for an instant only.

"Ten sheep to the acre," said he. "Wonderful, isn't it, Livingstone? And
you an' me used to ten acres to the sheep! But we were talking about
that last little spree; you want your Uncle Claude