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“Am I mistaken, or is your name Poindexter?”

David looked up, and recognized Harwood Courtney, a son of Lord Derwent. Courtney was a man of fashion, a member of the great clubs, and a man, as they say, with a reputation. He was a good twenty years older than David, and had been the companion of the latter’s father in some of his wildest escapades. To David, at this moment, he was the representative and symbol of that great, splendid, unregenerate world, with which it was his purpose to make acquaintance.

“You are not mistaken, Mr. Courtney,” he said, quietly. “Have you breakfasted? It is some time since we have met.”

“Why, yes, egad! If I remember right, you were setting out on another road than that which I was travelling. However, we sinners, you know, depend upon you parsons to pull us up in time to prevent any–er–any very serious catastrophe! Ha! ha!”

“I understand you; but for my part I have left the pulpit,” said David, uttering the irrevocable words with a carelessness which he himself wondered at.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Courtney, with a little intonation of surprise and curiosity, which his good breeding prevented him from formulating more explicitly. As David made no rejoinder, he presently continued: “Then– er–perhaps you might find it in your way to dine with me this evening. Only one or two friends–a very quiet Sunday party.”

“Thank you,” said David. “I had intended going to bed betimes to-night; but it will give me pleasure to meet a quiet party.”

“Then that’s settled,” exclaimed Courtney; “and meanwhile, if you’ve finished your coffee, what do you say to a turn in the Row? I’ve got my trap here, and a breath of air will freshen us up.”

David and Courtney spent the day together, and by evening the young ex- clergyman had made the acquaintance of many of the leading men about town. He had also allowed the fact to transpire that his pecuniary standing was of the soundest kind; but this was done so skillfully– with such a lofty air–that even Courtney, who was as cynical as any man, was by no means convinced that David’s change of fortune had anything to do with his relinquishing the pulpit.

“David Poindexter is no fool,” he remarked, confidentially, to a friend. “He has double the stuff in him that the old fellow had. You must get up early to get the better of a man who has been a parson, and seen through himself!”

David, in fact, felt himself the superior, intellectually and by nature, of most of the men he saw. He penetrated and comprehended them, but to them he was impenetrable; a certain air of authority rested upon him; he had abandoned the service of God; but the training whereby he had fitted himself for it stood him in good stead; it had developed his insight, his subtlety, and, strange to say, his powers of dissimulation. Contrary to what is popularly supposed, his study of the affairs of the other world had enabled him to deal with this world’s affairs with a half-contemptuous facility. As for the minor technicalities, the social pass-words, and so forth, to which much importance is generally ascribed, David had nothing to fear from them; first, because he was a man of noble manners, naturally as well as by cultivation; and, secondly, because the fact that he had been a clergyman acted as a sort of breastplate against criticism. It would be thought that he chose to appear ignorant of that which he really knew.

As for Mr. Courtney’s dinner, though it may doubtless have been a quiet one from his point of view, it differed considerably from such Sunday festivities as David had been accustomed to. A good deal of wine was drunk, and the conversation (a little cautious at first, on David’s account) gradually thawed into freedom. It was late when they rose from table; and then a proposition was made to go to a certain well-known club in St. James’s Street. David went with the rest, and, for the first time in his life, played cards for money; he lost seven hundred pounds–more money than he had handled during the last three years–but he kept his head, and at three o’clock in the morning drove with Courtney to the latter’s lodgings, with five hundred pounds in his pocket over and above the sum with which he had begun to play. Here was a wonderful change in his existence; but it did not seem to him half so wonderful as his reason told him it was. It seemed natural–as if, after much wandering, he had at last found his way into the place where he belonged. It is said that savages, educated from infancy amid civilized surroundings, will, on breathing once more their native air, tear off their clothes and become savages again. Somewhat similar may have been David’s case, who, inheriting in a vivid degree the manly instincts of his forefathers, had forcibly and by constraint of circumstances lived a life wholly opposed to these impulses–an artificial life, therefore. But now at length he had come into his birthright, and felt at home.