example with intuitive fidelity. Their wisdom was soon rewarded. The fire-raisers, seeing no one on the ground, used their wassáls freely from rick to rick, till all the ricks were ablaze.

"How beautifully the dry hay burns!" said the incendiaries with delight. "We have done our work thoroughly, and can now cut off;" and raising a shout of victory they retired.

"What can we do now?" asked the watchers of each other.

"Hem!" said the cleverest among them. "We had better report the matter to our master."

"Not at this stage? Should we not rather wait to see the ricks burnt down ?"

"It is hardly necessary to do that," replied the wisest. "The mischief has been thoroughly done without any prospect of restoration, and by the time we reach our master's house there will be nothing but ashes."

The reasoning was a settler, and Mr. Broadhurst thus received the earliest intimation of his hay crop having been fired when it had been completely burnt to the ground. The watchmen were zealous in their testimony; they had not only seen the ricks burnt, but had carefully observed the faces of the culprits by the glare of the conflagration. "Will you be able to identify them?"

Yes, sir; they are all known to us. They are the servants of Motee Baboo."

They knew where to find them, and eleven persons were arrested by the police on being named by them. There was no evidence against these besides that of the watchmen; but that was so circumstantial that the Sessions Judge considered their guilt to be established, and convicted them. This conviction was set aside by the Final Court on appeal, the evidence of the watchmen being pronounced to be unreliable. When the principals were at enmity the evidence of their retainers was not worth much, and in the present case it also appeared unaccountable to the higher court why the watchmen should not have first run to the thannah to report what they had witnessed, since that was nearer to the spot than their master's residence.

THE CAMP OF A MAHOMEDAN PRINCE.

It was at the commencement of March, 1852, that the Nawab Nagore of Mutagurh started with a large following on a hunting expedition towards the district of Maldah. The weather had begun to be perceptibly hot, and the spirits of the party were anything but buoyant; and the farce of hunting, for it was really no better than a farce, was drowsily got through, mainly in the neighbourhood of a village named Haranpore, where the camp remained fixed for about a month.

Among the followers of the Nawab on the occasion was one Meoh Burgoovood, a man of a cadaverous appearance and taciturn and un

social habits. He was nevertheless much liked by Agah Ali, the chief of the Nawab, and was also praised by the Nawab as being one of the best shots in his suite. Towards the end of March one day this man, after having been occupied for some time in the open along with the Nawab, returned to his camp in the evening to find that a tin box belonging to him, which contained property to the value of about 700 Rs., had been carried off. His servants were in fits, as also were those attached to other contiguous camps, for they all knew the character of Burgoovood, and that he would spare no one on whom his suspicions might alight till the actual thiefs were traced.

Many seizures were at once made under Burgoovood's orders; but he simplified proceedings greatly by lecturing to the parties captured, with a mind to induce them to give up the thieves.

"If you want a foretaste of hell, I will give it to you; otherwise you should lose no time in discovering the real culprits, and you have better means of finding out who they are than I have."

The parties apprehended were greatly terrified, but not from a guilty conscience. They knew the man who had got hold of them, and were afraid of the tortures he was able to inflict. All that they could do to delay the infliction was to ask for a little time to consult each other towards arriving at a common decision, and this being given, they composed themselves to a strict inquiry, which resulted in their suspicions being directed towards two of their number-namely, one Jinkoo, a fakir, and one Buddee, who was the son of a goolam, or slave, in the service of the Nawab.

"Wretch ! I am certain that you have done this!" exclaimed one of the servants of Burgoovood addressing Buddee, and the latter was so taken aback by the suddenness of the charge that he fainted from fear. Jinkoo being similarly accosted, also got exceedingly embarrassed, and the distress exhibited by both was interpreted by their challengers as the confusion of guilt.

"Well, have you discovered the thieves ?" demanded Burgoovood of his prisoners when the respite given to them was over.

"Yes, sir!" was the unanimous reply. "They are Jinkoo and Buddee, and a little pressure will induce them to confess."

Burgoovood was soon in his own element, but before proceeding to extremities ia the matter he sought the advice of Agah Ali, or rather for his authority to back him.

"Oh! give it to them by all means," said the man in authority; you can never expect a confession to be absolutely voluntary. First bring the fellows in a fit state to be reasoned with" and acting accordingly, Burgoovood had them both beaten till they declared in agony that they, and none other, had committed the theft.

"But a mere confession of it won't suffice. You must point out and restore the property."

"The property, sir? The property we have given to a gareenan at Bogurreab, and will be found with him."

"Indeed! Then you must go to him and recover it."

That night Buddee was conveyed on a camel to Bogurreah, a distance of about eight or nine miles from Haranpore; but on reaching that place, Buddee confessed that his statement about the gareenan was entirely fictitious, made in the intensity of pain to secure a respite of beating; and on his knees he implored mercy, asserting that he knew nothing whatever of the theft. He was now beaten again as unmercifully as before, till maddened by his sufferings he blubbered forth that he had given the property to two nautch girls at Haranpore, upon which he was taken back to that place.

The story about the nautch girls was as fictitious as that about the gareenan. They were both haphazard statements put forward for one and the same purpose-namely, to arrest for a while the hands that tormented them; but their tormentors would not yet believe that the poor wretches were really guiltless.

"Now, Jinkoo, will you say what has become of the box, and where it is to be found?,"

Jinkoo attempted to answer, but his tongue clove to the roof his mouth. He had been as violently beaten as Buddee, and his contortions of pain were apparent; but they excited no pity in his persecutors. A continuous beating was now kept up for hours on both, after which there were some intervals of respite, which were again succeeded by treatment as unmerciful as before. These beatings were so intense that one witness said that the skin was pealed off from the bodies of both the sufferers, while another explained that the flesh assumed the appearance of raw beef, and the bodies were covered with sores. On the fourth day from the commencement of their tortures the camp was moved from Haranpore to Beloll, and thither the sufferers were carried along with the rest; and two days after they were similarly pushed forward to Majole. Here a veil over the last scenes of the tragedy was thrown by medical assistance being procured for them; but they had already reached a stage from which it was not in the power of the native doctor to reclaim them. Jinkoo died a few hours after their arrival at Majole, Buddee the day after.

"This is a sorry business now," said Burgoovood. "The loss of money was bad enough. What if the district authorities take it into their heads to sift the case according to their queer notions of law and justice ?"

"The district authorities be hanged," said Agah Ali. "Who can have the audacity to speak of law to us? The district authorities have nothing whatever to do with the Nawab Nagore's camp."

The district authorities were, however, of a different opinion. For a time they were altogether in the dark in respect to the matter, for it was given out in the camp that the two men had died of cholera, and they were buried in the usual fashion, without any inquest on their bodies. It was not till a month after that stories about the barbarities inflicted on them began gradually to ooze out, and it was then that an investigation into the matter was made. This fully established the torture they had suffered, and that their death was caused by it;

but no direct proofs to criminate the greatest culprits, Agah Ali and Meab Burgoovood, could be come to. The parties who gave effect to the maltreatment, five in number, were convicted of culpable homicide, the intention to take life not being inferable from the evidence that was forthcoming, and they were sentenced each to fourteen years' imprisonment in banishment, with labour and irons; but the parties who ordered the maltreatment went scot-free. To prevent a recurrence of such atrocity, it was ordered by the Government that Nawab Nagore was not from that time to move out any where with a large following without being accompanied by an officer of the police.

TO THÉRÈSE.

WE'LL walk, oh love, through life together,
Through sunny and through stormy weather,
Nor heed the gazing crowd a feather
So long as we're each other's treasure.

We'll arm-in-arm the wide world through--
We'll never quarrel, I and you;

No strife shall sever hearts so true,
Our kisses shall fall thick as dew.

We'll thread the vale of life on roses--
We'll stop and pick its choicest posies;
And when our sweet existence closes,
We'll fly where endless love reposes.

MATTHEW SETON.

TOM TURNPENNY'S WIFE.

BY W. T. GREENE,

Author of "A Desperate Character," &c., &c.

HEIGHO! What a long time it appears, since I first met Tom Turnpenny!

I must be getting quite an old fellow! and yet, upon my word, I don't feel it; I don't, indeed and my friends, one and all, tell me that I don't look it; and so I cannot be so very ancient, after all.

Somebody has said that there is "a grace in growing old that is granted to but few;" but, then, somebody is always saying something disagreeable, for no other purpose than that of making some one else uncomfortable.

So be it: I don't mean for my part, ever to be a bit older than I am. That is to say-for such a sweeping assertion seems to require a little qualification or explanation, does not it?-until I cannot help it, which I hope will not be for a good many years to

come.

"But what," cries the reader, "what in the name of fortune has all this got to do with Tom Turnpenny, or Tom Turnpenny's wife?" Patience, "gentle" reader; softly, if you please: if you will not let me tell my story in my own way, I must just give it up. Give it up!

Not I, Sir Crossticks, not a bit of it: I have a story to tell, and I mean to tell it-in my own way, too: so there! take that home with you, and put it under your pillow, and sleep on it, if my lady will let you.

I rather think I had him there.

Had him! I should say so: but to resume.

It is a certain round number of years since I first met Tom Turnpenny, and there wasn't a jollier fellow under the sun than he was then. He was the Chairman of the Ancient and Honourable Order of Antediluvian Buffaloes (at least, we'll say that was the name of the Society over which he presided, and of which I was about to become a member); and, I repeat it, there wasn't a jollier little fellow under the sun.

A little fellow? well, yes : Tom was not more than five foot four and a half inches in height; but he had a heart, bless you! big enough for a giant, and an arm!

He could wrestle with a fellow five inches taller than himself and get the better of him and box! there were not many could ataud before him with the gloves!