Moore looked his enemy calmly in the face and read there a courage fully the equal of his own.

"Egad, Sir Percival," said he, "for once I believe you. No doubt you will find it in your heart to release the bailiffs from further attendance this evening?"

"Your suggestion is a good one, Mr. Moore," answered the baronet, smothering his rage. "Carry to Mr. d.y.k.e my thanks and add one more to the list of the many kindnesses for which I am already indebted to you, sir."

Moore and Sheridan lost but little time in the exchange of social amenities with their discomfited host. The younger man sought the card-room, bent on forgetting, for a while at least, the slavery into which he had sold his pen; the elder picked up the temporarily abandoned thread of his intoxication without further delay.

_Chapter Twenty-One_

_THE POET FALLS FROM FAVOR_

About fifteen minutes elapsed before some zealous courtier brought the poem in the _Examiner_ to the attention of the Regent, who thereupon, forgetting the presence of Mrs. FitzHerbert, who had allowed him to overtake her a few minutes previous, swore with an ease and variety that would have been a credit to the proverbial Billingsgate seller of fish.

As the rage of Wales was not of the repressed order, the voice of royalty raised high in anger drew about him a crowd of courtiers who had been eagerly expecting such an outbreak all the evening.

"Sir Percival!" cried the Regent, catching sight of the baronet in a distant corner where Farrell and he were enjoying the tumult consequent on the culmination of their plot. "Have you seen this devilish set of verses?"

"I regret to say I have, your Highness," responded the baronet both shocked and grieved.

"It is infamous!" stormed Wales. "Gad's life! it is intolerable. I devote my best efforts to my country's service only to be foully lampooned in the public Press. Why, curse me--!"

"Your Highness, calm yourself, I beg of you," said Mrs. FitzHerbert, soothingly, but the Prince was not to be so easily restrained.

"Calm, indeed?" he shouted. "Calm, when such d.a.m.nable insults are written and printed? Not I, madame."

"Rise superior to this malicious attack," persisted the beauty, little pleased that her influence should fail so publicly. "Remember your greatness, sir."

"A lion may be stung into anger by a gadfly, madame," retorted Wales, growing even more furious. "Brummell, have you read this infernal poem?"

"Not I, your Highness," replied the Beau, who, accompanied by Moore, had forsaken the card-table at the first outburst of royal wrath.

"Then do so now," commanded the enraged Regent, thrusting the paper into his hands.

Brummell ran his eyes hurriedly over the verses, while Wales continued pacing up and down the now crowded room in unabating fury.

"I saw them earlier in the evening, your Highness," said Sheridan, unable to keep his oar out of the troubled waters.

"Oh, did you, indeed?" demanded Wales. "And no doubt chuckled like the devil over them?"

"Your Highness!" said the aged wit, trying to speak reproachfully, in spite of an internal laugh that threatened to break out and ruin him.

"I believe you are quizzing me now if the truth were known," a.s.serted the Prince, wrathfully suspicious. "If I am not mistaken, these lines sound marvellously like the work of your pen, sirrah."

"On my honor you wrong me, Sire," declared Sheridan, in a tone so unmistakably truthful that Wales could not doubt his entire innocence.

"May I not see the poem, Mr. Brummell?" asked d.y.k.e, who had just entered the room.

The Beau obligingly handed over the paper to the old gentleman. As the old rhymer turned away, Moore looked over his shoulder and, scanning with eager eyes the page in quest of the satire which had so enraged the Regent, found it before the elder man's less keen sight had performed a like service for him. Moore turned sick with horror and clutched the nearest chair for support. How had the verses found their way into print? d.y.k.e was ruined if it were proved that he wrote them. Bessie, too, would feel the weight of the Regent's displeasure, and without doubt would be deprived of her position at Drury Lane for her father's additional punishment. He had saved them from one disaster only to see them plunged hopelessly into another almost as dire.

A groan from the unhappy author announced that he, too, had recognized his poem. The next moment he turned on Moore with a look of despair on his usually placid face.

"Tom," he whispered, "you have ruined me. My poem is printed. Oh, Tom, how could you? How could you?"

"Surely you do not believe that I gave it to the Press?" said Moore, hoa.r.s.ely, stung to the heart by the accusing look he read in his old friend's eyes.

"Who else could have done it? I gave you the only copy three months ago."

"I remember, sir. Ah, I can explain it. I left my garret in the afternoon and went for a stroll. When I returned home I found Sir Percival and Farrell there. Since that day I have never thought of it.

They have done this, Mr. d.y.k.e."

"I do not believe you," answered d.y.k.e in a voice so scornful and suspicious that Moore felt as though he had received a blow in the face.

Meanwhile Wales's anger had not cooled in the least.

"Egad!" he was saying, "if I but knew the author's name!"

"There is still a chance, Mr. d.y.k.e," whispered Moore. "Deny all knowledge of the matter. Swear you did not write it if necessary."

"Is it impossible to learn the ident.i.ty of the writer?" asked Brummell seriously.

"Impossible?" repeated Wales. "Of course it is impossible, Beau! You do not think he will acknowledge this slander as his own, do you?"

"It does seem unlikely," admitted the exquisite.

"So unlikely," snorted the Prince, "that I 'd give a thousand pounds to find the rascal out."

Farrell, spurred on by a nudge from the elbow of his patron, stepped forward.

"Your Highness," said he, calmly, "I accept your offer."

Wales gazed at the dapper young law student in surprise.

"You know the author of this attack upon me, sir?" he asked.

"I do," answered Farrell, firmly.

Moore, resolved to antic.i.p.ate and if possible prevent the accusation of d.y.k.e which he felt sure was about to follow, stepped hurriedly forward.

"One moment, your Highness," said he. "Do you know this gentleman? He is a liar, a blackleg, and a coward, unworthy of your Highness' belief or consideration."

"Curse you," began Farrell, white to his lips with shame and pa.s.sion, but Moore did not allow him to finish.

"I struck him in Ireland, yet he never resented my insult. Think, your Highness, is such a poltroon worthy of belief?"

"Sire!" stammered Farrell.