‘Like Pegasus himself.’

’If that’s the case, I shouldn’t mind, Holloway, stretching a point for him.  Do you mind showing me his paces?’

‘Not at all,’ replies the lawyer, only too happy to show off his own:  and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet canter.  The moment is not to be lost; the churchyard gate is at hand; Sheridan slips in, knowing that his mounted tormentor cannot follow him, and there bursts into a roar of laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning Holloway.

[Illustration:  “A TREASURE FOR A LADY”—­SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER.]

But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like this, he Required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the law, when they came, as they did frequently in his later years.  It was the fashionable thing in bygone novels of the ‘Pelham’ school, and Even in more recent comedies, to introduce a well-dressed sheriff’s officer at a dinner party or ball, and take him through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the revelation of his real character; and probably some such scene is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extravagant:  but Sheridan’s adventures with bailiffs seem to have excited more attention.  In the midst of his difficulties he never ceased to entertain his friends, and ’why should he not do so, since he had not to pay?’ ‘Pay your bills, sir? what a shameful waste of money!’ he once said.  Thus, one day a young friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, ’quite in a quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of great talent, and most charming companion.’  When they arrived they found ‘the old friend’ already installed, and presenting a somewhat unpolished appearance, which the young man explained to himself by supposing him to be a genius of somewhat low extraction.  His habits at dinner, the eager look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were all accounted for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight distinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked his opinion on English poetry.  Meanwhile Sheridan and the servant between them plied the genius very liberally with wine:  and the former, rising, made him a complimentary speech on his critical powers, while the young guest, who had heard nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very bad English, grew more and more amused.  The wine told in time, the ‘genius’ sang songs which were more Saxon than delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the shoulder, and at last rolled fairly under the table.  ‘Now,’ said Sheridan, quite calmly to his young friend, ’we will go up stairs:  and, Jack,’ (to his servant) ’take that man’s hat and give him to the watch.’  He then explained in the same calm tone, that this was a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather tired, and wanted to be freed.