Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/177

Rh just at his own door, the man summoned courage to speak.

"Lord Stranleigh! One moment, if you please."

The man who takes from his pocket a full purse after two o'clock in the morning, in a deserted side-street of London, runs considerable personal risk, and cannot be accounted overwise, even by his most ardent admirers, but Stranleigh had seldom been molested as he took his walks abroad at all hours of the day and night, and even when, upon occasion, he had encountered a band of roughs, he was known to have won them over by a certain charm of manner and speech which was as new to them as it was disconcerting. They called him a "toff," and always found him very generous, if they did not attempt violence, when, to their dismay, they learned there was a science in the use of fists which more than counterbalanced their superiority in strength and numbers. Upon occasion, at the most interesting point of the battle, he would spring back and say in tones of such sincerity that every ruffian who heard him knew he was speaking the truth:

"Thanks, you chaps, but cut your sticks at once. The police are coming. Run for all you're worth," and when the police arrived on the deserted scene of the conflict, they smiled when they saw Lord Stranleigh, whom most of them knew, and were well aware that it was useless to ask him which way the hooligans had fled, for he would never give