Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/29

Rh “Then I’m unspeakably obliged to you,” replied the fervent beggar, returning the penny. “I wish you goodnight, sir, with a thousand thanks!”

“No, no; hang it all! I’m a sportsman myself; you’re a man of my kidney, and you hadn’t even a brown to toss with! Oblige me by taking this yellow-boy; no, curse it, I beg your pardon—I might have seen! At least, sir, you will join me at the tavern, to show there’s no ill-feeling? A cut off the joint, I think, and a tankard of stout; what say you? I feel peckish myself. Come, come, or you’ll offend me!”

But the eyes which his miseries had left dry were dim again at the kindness of the world; and Tom Erichsen had not spoken because he could not. “May I live to repay this!” he muttered now. “It will be my first bite since yesterday.”

And in another hour it was a new man who was pushing forward, with such brisk steps, upon the high road to Avenue Lodge and his appointed fate.

Moreover, the currents of other lives than his had been deflected, for good or evil, by the spin of that borrowed coin.

CHAPTER 2

THE OTHER LIVES

The household at Avenue Lodge consisted at this period of Nicholas Harding, M. P., J. P. (also of Fish Street Hill, E. C., and Winwood Hall, Suffolk); his five daughters; his men-servants and maid-servants, and a certain stranger within his gates