There's the breakfast-bell! Make haste, old boy, I'm as hungry as a hunter!" And he left his friend to finish dressing, and entered the saloon, where he greeted his two other companions, Alec, or, as he was oftener called, Sandy Macfarlane, and Pierre Duprez; the former an Oxford student,--the latter a young fellow whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and with whom he had kept up a constant and friendly intercourse.

A greater contrast than these two presented could scarcely be imagined.

Macfarlane was tall and ungainly, with large loose joints that seemed to protrude angularly out of him in every direction,--Duprez was short, slight and wiry, with a dapper and by no means ungraceful figure.

The one had formal _gauche_ manners, a never-to-be-eradicated Glasgow accent, and a slow, infinitely tedious method of expressing himself,--the other was full of restless movement and pantomimic gesture, and being proud of his English, plunged into that language recklessly, making it curiously light and flippant, though picturesque, as he went.

Macfarlane was destined to become a shining light of the established Church of Scotland, and therefore took life very seriously,--Duprez was the spoilt only child of an eminent French banker, and had very little to do but enjoy himself, and that he did most thoroughly, without any calculation or care for the future.