Mr. Rowl. Pemberton Max

      CHAPTER I

       “LE JEUNE ET BEAU DUNOIS”

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      “Here is neither labour to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or danger can procure or purchase. Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?”—Rasselas, chap. iii.

      It was quite likely that at an earlier stage of the afternoon the youthful and lively little company in the drawing room at Northover had been playing forfeits, or something equally childish. But when Mr. Ralph Bentley, the owner of Northover, strolled along the terrace about half-past five o’clock with a couple of companions, they were making music, for a very pleasant tenor voice came floating through the windows, which, because it was a fine mid-March day, were slightly open. The voice was singing “Since First I Saw Your Face.”

      The middle-aged gentlemen outside stopped to listen. “Very tuneful, egad!” observed one of them. “Who’s the minstrel, Bentley?”

      “Judging from the ‘r’s,’ I should say it is our captive friend des Sablières,” responded the master of the house with a smile. “Don’t you think so, Ramage?”

      “ ‘The sun whose beams most glorious are,’ ” sang the voice, but the brow of the gentleman just addressed in no way resembled that luminary.

      “What right has a French prisoner to be singing English songs?” he growled. “If he must sing at all, let him keep to his own jargon!”

      “But surely one should admire the Frenchman’s enterprise,” objected the first speaker. “And he sings the old song very well. How did he learn it, I wonder?”

      “Better ask him, Sturgis,” replied Mr. Bentley with a twinkle,