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"Oh, dear me—no: not at all, sir."

"These gentlemen probably will join me? Suppose, Mr. Legge, we have glasses round?"

"If you please, sir," replied Legge, who really felt very much obliged to him: "warm, sir—or cold?"

"Suit the tastes of these gentlemen; I'll have it cold."

"But really, sir," observed Quocks, "we don't wish that."

"You're a good fellow, I believe," returned Sylvester. "It appears to me that you are all good fellows; and as such you'll not refuse to drink with me?"

"Certainly not, sir. We're very much obliged to you, only we don't like to impose on goodnature, sir; that's all."

"If that be all, then, don't say another word about it."

Legge—who had a brilliant eye to business—produced five glasses of brandy-and-water, and Sylvester, on counting them, observed, "You, of course, never drink brandy-and-water, yourself?"

"Much obliged to you," said Legge, who at once took the hint, but had no more idea of his guest being asleep than he had of his being the "spectre." Nay, it is questionable whether he would have believed it, if he had even been told.

"Well," said Sylvester, "I wonder whether this mysterious swell intends to visit us to-night."

"The swell, sir," observed Legge; "beg pardon; whom do you mean?"

"The ghost!"

"Oh," cried Legge, who raised a hearty laugh, in which the rest, as a matter of gratitude, joined. "The idea of calling a ghost a swell. Well, I never heard anything better in my life."

"It's a boney fide 'un, that is," observed Obadiah. "Julius Cæsar couldn't have made a better joke than that."

"Was Julius Cæsar very fond of joking?" inquired Sylvester.

"Fond of joking! What! don't you remember when he and Pompey there welted the Dutch, what a game they had with 'em? Why, there wasn't a more fructifying joker in the world: he was the very very first original inventor of joking: Joe Miller stole the whole of his jokes from Julius Cæsar."

"Indeed! Well now, I wasn't aware of that."

"Oh, yes. Why, didn't the Greeks deify him—isn't he the Heathen god of joking?"

"Very likely. I thought it had been Momus."

"Momus! Momus was a fool to him. He couldn't hold the candle to Julius Cæsar.

"That's true," observed Sylvester, who was highly amused.

"He wasn't fit to tie Julius Cæsar's shoe-strings," continued Obadiah. "There isn't a man alive like him, with the exception of Harry Brougham, and he's a rattler. Put all the Bobby Peels you can find in a lump, and they won't come half up to Harry Brougham."

"Brougham's a great man," said Sylvester.

"A great man, sir! He's a cut above a great man: he's what I call