.

ROWLEY'S VISCOUNT.
By eight the next morning Dudgeon and I had made our parting.

By that time we had grown to be extremely familiar; and I would very willingly have kept him by me, and even carried him to Amersham Place.

But it appeared he was due at the public-house where we had met, on some affairs of my great-uncle the Count, who had an outlying estate in that part of the shire.

If Dudgeon had had his way the night before, I should have been arrested on my uncle's land and by my uncle's agent, a culmination of ill-luck.
A little after noon I started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable.
The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling.