Several times that night did the brightest eyes in Somersetshire rove anxiously round the rooms in search of our hero; but he was seen no more.
It was on the stairs that Clifford encountered his comrades; taking an arm of each, he gained the door without any adventure worth noting, save that, being kept back by the crowd for a few moments, the moralizing Augustus Tomlinson, who honoured the moderate Whigs by enrolling himself among their number, took up, pour passer le temps, a tall gold-headed cane, and weighing it across his finger with a musing air, said, "Alas! among our supporters we often meet heads as heavy, but of what a different metal!" The crowd now permitting, Augustus was walking away with his companions, and, in that absence of mind characteristic of philosophers, unconsciously bearing with him the gold-headed object of his reflection, when a stately footman, stepping up to him, said, "Sir, my cane!" "Cane, fellow!" said Tomlinson.

"Ah, I am so absent! Here is thy cane.
Only think of my carrying off the man's cane, Ned! Ha, ha!" "Absent indeed!" grunted a knowing chairman, watching the receding figures of the three gentlemen; "body o' me! but it was the cane that was about to be absent!".