OUR FRIENDS 205 



his diversions. The green cloth now received 

 more of his attention, and, as a matter of course, 

 of his money. Things went badly with him, and 

 he began to see the end of his second fortune 

 before he called a halt. Bad times in Ireland 

 seriously reduced his rents, and he was forced to 

 dispose of his salable estates. Then he came to 

 this country in the hope of recouping himself, and 

 to get away from the fast set that surrounded him. 



" I can resist anything but temptation," this 

 warm-hearted Irishman would say ; and that was 

 the keynote of his character. 



Though Sir Tom was only sixty years old, he 

 looked seventy. He was much broken in health 

 by gout and the fast pace of his early manhood. 

 But his spirit was untouched by misfortune, dis- 

 ease, or hardship. His courage was as good as 

 when he served as a subaltern of the Guards in 

 the trenches before Sebastopol, or presented his 

 body as a mark for the sledge-hammer blows of 

 Tom Sayers, just for diversion. His constitution 

 must have been superb, for even in his decrepi- 

 tude he was good to look upon : five feet ten, fine 

 body, slightly given to rotundity, legs a little 

 shrunken in the shanks, but giving unmistakable 

 signs of what they had been (" not lost, but gone 

 before," as he would say of them), hands and 

 feet aristocratic in form and well cared for, and 

 a fine head set on broad shoulders. His hair was 

 thin, and he parted it with great exactness in 

 the middle. His eyes were brown, large, and 



