“I can vouch for the truth of one part, sir,—as to squandering his money in town. I had hoped perhaps his affairs had improved since he retired from fashionable life.”
“But what of his history? I’ve told you all I know. What do _you_ know?”
The Squire leaned forward toward the traveller with an almost painful expression of eagerness on his face.
“Why, sir,” said the other, as if with some reluctance, “as you are good enough to take an interest, I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you a little story. I dare say you remember the affair of Lord Hilby,—him that was murdered by footpads one night in Covent Garden.”
“I heard of it at the time,” said the Squire, “’twas two or three years ago.”
“Yes, sir. His lordship had been playing till a late hour in a gaming-house, you may remember, and had won very heavily. He was walking away from the house, his pockets full of gold. He was attended by a servant and a linkboy. It was a very dark night. No doubt, sir, you know the place,—what they call the piazza in Covent Garden, where the gaming-houses are.”
“I was there—once,” replied the Squire, with a glum look: no doubt he had reason to repent the experience.
“Ay, sir, once is enough for many a country gentleman,” said the other, sympathetically, “though the tables don’t always have the best of it. There’s been fortunes retrieved there, as well as fortunes lost. And certainly Lord Hilby had been in wonderful luck that night. Some think that word of his large winnings had been passed out to a person in the street, in the short time between his rising from the table and his leaving the house. Of course everybody in the room knew how great his winnings were, and saw where he put them. In any case, there was no chair to be had when he came out, and he started to walk to Pall Mall. But he hadn’t gone far when suddenly three ruffians sprang up from the foot of one of the pillars of the colonnade, where they had been crouching all in a heap. One of them knocked the link out of the boy’s hand, one attacked the servant with a bludgeon, and the third caught my lord by the throat and called for his money.”
“’Tis a wicked, dangerous place, London!” observed the Squire, in a low voice, shaking his head.