open and a group of ladies and children there and many gentlemen saluting them as they entered or left the house.

“A respectable company,” I heard Boyd mutter to himself, as he stood slapping the dust from hunting-shirt and leggings and smoothing the fringe. And, “Damme, Loskiel,” he said, “we’re like to cut a most contemptible figure among such grand folk — what with our leather breeches, and saddle-reek for the only musk we wear. Lord! But yonder stands a handsome girl — and my condition mortifies me so that I could slink off to the mews for shame and lie on straw with the hostlers.”

There was, I knew, something genuine in his pretense of hurt vanity, even under the merry mask he wore; but I only laughed.