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This is Tom Lydyeard, the tall well-bred-looking man with the red beard turning silver at the roots, and the fair hair in which the parting is rather broader than it used to be. Not so young or so active as on that cheerless April morning when he marched across Waterloo-bridge with his regiment on their way to join the troops in the Crimea; but a handsome fellow yet, with a well-preserved figure and a keen eye. Tom has preserved his figure better than his temper, which, on occasions, is apt to be remarkably short; 'Hansom and Growler' is the nickname which this combination of good looks and bad temper has obtained for poor Tom from some of the junior members of the Rag, where he grumbles about the wine and the cooking, snaps at the waiters, and requires all the cajolery of St. Kevin, pleasantest of Irish army-doctors, to keep him within bounds.

Tom is evidently not best pleased at the present moment. The man in the stall next to his is a very stout Italian, with lustreless black gloves on his hands and a square diamond brooch in the middle of his plaited shirt-front, who is mopping himself with a purple-silk handkerchief, and with whom Tom Lydyeard is horribly disgusted.