A STRANGE PERSON 189 



happiness, moving in good society, and with a business 

 hitherto kicrative, to which I gave all the attention I 

 could, the love of field-sports did but little, if at all, 

 interfere with it : I could not control, though I partly 

 foresaw, the circumstances that accomplished my fall from 

 a 230sition I had held with credit, and in which I had 

 gained the s^ood will and esteem of those who had known 

 me both abroad and at home. 



Among the persons who came within the circle of my 

 acquaintance, but with whom I was not on terms of 

 intimacy, was one of rather strange appearance. He 

 possessed very soft and, to some, pleasing, but by no 

 means polished, manners, and always addressed every one 

 Avith a smile. 



Now, I myself experienced no wrong from this person ; 

 and though I was his stepping-stone to fortune, it is not 

 for me to judge how he was enabled to take that step. 

 The first time I saw him, when he was not in very good 

 odour with his fortune or his friends, was in a bookseller's 

 shop I frequented. On one occasion, a stranger — a 

 traveller, I suppose — came in, and, eyeing this gentleman 

 as he made his exit, asked his name. On being told — 



" Ah, I thought so," he said ; " I thought I remembered 

 him as one of eleven that ran away from a school at 

 Durham, and, out of the eleven, seven have been hung." 



This might have been a little jeu d'esprit of the 

 stranger's, but I do not forget it ; for he was a North 

 countryman, and might have fallen under the designation 

 of a Yorkshire tyke, had he not had more lofty aspirations ; 

 neither did I forget his habitual smile, which gained for 

 him in the betting-ring the soubriquet of " Silky," and 



