'I thought it was just possible that your wanderings might have taken you there, because all young Englishmen, when they wander, make for the mountains. I asked because Bickenbach and I think of taking up our quarters at Luchon in the month of August.'

'You will find me there when you arrive,' Colborne declared, a sudden rush of hope causing his heart to leap up.

'Indeed? Well, that would not be an actual miracle; although I confess that I shall be profoundly astonished if you keep your promise. In any case, you have given me an excuse to substitute au revoir for the ugly word adieu.'

Thereupon she retired through a door facing that of which he held the handle between his fingers, and he left the house a happier and more sanguine man than he had been on entering it.

(To be continued.)

LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.

The right of publishing Translations of Articles in this Magazine is reserved.]

THERE, Justinian! now you've gone and done it!'

Mr. Percival Curgenven strode through his garden, there was not space in it for him to get up a run, and, leaning his elbows on the breasting of stone in which were fixed the rails that cut him off from the road, he looked between the bars, and said, 'By George, Justinian! you've gone and killed one or two! It's a case of manslaughter against you, and penal servitude.'

Looking a little more attentively in the dusk he distinguished the figures in the road-Physic struggling to his feet, the lady motionless. Then he exclaimed, 'By George, my boy! it's a bad job-confound your fire-ballooning!' He threw open the gate and ran out to lend assistance.

The cob had dashed along the highway with the broken shafts and the rein dangling from him. The dog-cart lay, a mass of chips, on one side. Mr. Percival Curgenven did not give it a thought.

'I'll bring an action against you,' cried Physic, reaching his feet. What infernal pranks? Oh! I beg pardon a thousand times. Mr. Percival, you don't mean to say it is you?

'That boy of mine has been letting off a fire-balloon,' said Mr. Curgenven, but never mind that. Is the lady hurt?' "Hurt-of course she's hurt. VOL. XIX.-NO. 110, N.S.

How could it be otherwise?

6

It's a miracle I'm not killed. Fetch a light, and let's see what is the matter with her.'

'Here's the remains of this darned fire-balloon flickering in the hedge,' said Mr. Percival Curgenven, wrapping his silk handkerchief round his fingers and laying hold of a wire connected with a flaming sponge saturated in spirits of wine, and which was all that remained of the ill-fated fire-balloon.

Mr. Percival Curgenven brought this over to where the lady lay unconscious in the road.

'I hope her neck is not broken,' said this gentleman, 'partly for your sake, Justin, and partly for hers.'

Mr. Percival Curgenven knelt by the prostrate woman and passed the flaming tow to and fro above her face. The eyes were closed, but not shut, and the light was reflected through the eyelashes.

"Why-who the deuce?—she's very like-but here, Justin, lend a hand, and, Physic, you also, if not broken to bits. We must not leave her in the road, but carry her into the Pill-box.'

The Pill-box was Mr. P. Curgenven's residence in the suburbs of Liskeard. It was a small-a ridiculously small villa. The former occupier of this house had been pleased to call it 'The Court,' and to have his letters addressed to him as a resident at 'The Court, Liskeard.'

When he departed, owing to inability of the bankers to honour his cheques, Mr. Percival Curgenven had taken the house.

Said he, in his dry fashion, 'I don't see why a house any more than a beast should take its title from its least noble part. The rattlesnake and the wagtail are exceptions in the realm of animals. The back yard, that measures twelve feet by ten, is the only court this house can speak of, and we had better say nothing about it. So I shall call it the "Pill-box"; then everyone will understand that it is small, and that its owner has had something to do with medicine. I don't see the fun in lodges that lead to nothing, in manors that have no more land than a vegetable-garden attached to them, and in halls where there is hardly room to turn round in the passage.'

Mr. Percival Curgenven was a cousin of Mr. Lambert, and possessed some of the family fatality of making a muddle of life. He had been educated as a surgeon, and had walked the hospitals and bought a practice. Then, finding the practice he had purchased had been spoiled by the man from whom he bought it, by