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 done I liked Nicky Steele; and there's few men in this world that ever I did like. But that wasn't the place to say so, and as the night went on, I had just as much as I could do to manage him. He'd been drinking cognac, you see, and there was a time, about four in the morning, when his courage left him, and he broke down like a woman.

"Hildebrand, Hildebrand," he wailed, lying on his bed, with his clothes on, "where will I be this time to-morrow? What's to become of me immortal soul? Is there no one that will bring a priest to me? Am I to die without a friend in the world—not a friend, by Heaven!—me that was born a Catholic?"

He went on like this for a good half hour; but I gave him some more drink, and about half -past four he began to doze. As for myself, I never closed my eyes, but sat there beside him, while the cold white dawn came creeping along the streets, and Paris bestirred herself to begin another day.

"Good Lord!" said I, looking down on his pale face, "to think that this time to-morrow your body may lie under the ground, and I may be loose on the road of life again, and all for the shadow of a woman who may mean nothing at all, and whom, like enough, you may never see again. Well, well! we've seen some queer times together, Sir Nicolas Steele, that we have; good times and bad times, days when we've not known where our dinner was coming from, and days when we could have taken a bath in the guineas. And now, it's come to this, that you're