“Murder!  Take him off, Jenny; kick him; the beggar is curling and laughing at the same time.  Confound you, can’t you lay the irons down when I say a good thing.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha!”

This strange trio chuckled a space.  Miles the loudest.  “Tom, pour out my tea; and you, Jenny, if you will come to the scratch again, ha! ha!—­I’ll tell you how I came by this.”

This promise brought the inquisitive Jenny to the basin directly.

“You know Hazeltine?”

“Yes, sir, a tall gentleman that comes here now and then.  That is the one you are to run a race with on the public course,” put in Jenny, looking up with a scandalized air.

“That is the boy; but how the deuce did you know?”

“Gentlemen to run with all the dirty boys looking on like horses,” remonstrated the grammatical one, “it is a disgrace.”

“So it is—­for the one that is beat.  Well, I was to meet Hazeltine to supper out of town.  By-the-by, you don’t know Tom Yates?”

“Oh,” said Jenny, “I have heard of him, too.”

“I doubt that; there are a good many of his name.”

“The rake, I mean; lives a mile or two out of Sydney.

“So do half a dozen more of them.”

“This one is about the biggest gambler and sharper unhung.”

“All right! that is my friend!  Well, he gave us a thundering supper—­lots of lush.”

“What is lush?”

“Tea and coffee and barley-water, my dear.  Oh! can’t you put the thundering irons down when I say a good thing?  Well, I mustn’t be witty any more, the penalty is too severe.”

I need hardly say it was not Mr. Miles’s jokes that agitated Robinson now; on the contrary, in the midst of his curiosity and rising agitation these jokes seemed ghastly impossibilities.

“Well, at ten o’clock we went upstairs to a snug little room, and all four sat down to a nice little green table.”

“To gamble?”

“No! to whist; but now comes the fun.  We had been playing about four hours, and the room was hot, and Yates was gone for a fresh pack, and old Hazeltine was gone into the drawing-room to cool himself.  Presently he comes back and he says in a whisper, “Come here, old fellows.”  We went with him to the drawing-room, and at first sight we saw nothing, but presently flash came a light right in our eyes; it seemed to come from something glittering in the field.  And these flashes kept coming and going.  At last we got the governor, and he puzzled over it a little while.  ‘I know what it is,’ cried he, ’it is my cucumber glass.’”

Jenny looked up.  “Glass might glitter,” said she, “but I don’t see how it could flash.”