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 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 indicted 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.

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.

I am.

TOM TURNPENNY'S WIFE.

BY W. T. GREENE,

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

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 ('rossticks, 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.

[ 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 yet the better of him : and box! there were not many could stand before him with the gloves !

a

Once he fought a great big bargee, who was correcting his wife (the bargee's, not Tom's) with a small crowbar, and that bargee's face was a spectacle when the deed was done, while Tom's hadn't a scratch.

Clever? I should say so, indeed.

Why, the Buffaloes were all clever until I joined them ; one of the conditions of membership being proof of having been engaged in authorship for at least two years, and having publlshed at least one work that had been favourably received by the public and the reviewers.

All these conditions Tom had more than fulfilled : he was, moreover, Editor of the Crucible, a weekly journal of rather a critical turn, and had in addition published two three-volume novels, both of which, but especially the last, had been very well received.

Tom had a mother, and two elder spinster-sisters, who all three looked upon his connexion with the Buffaloes as something shock. ing: in fact, I think they would as soon, almost, have seen him a member of the shoe-black brigade.

And yet, if you had asked them why, I feel positive that they could have given you no good, or valid reason for their dislike to a society of which they knew nothing, except that once a week it kept their son and brother out until the small hours of the morn. ing, when he let himself in with his latch-key; and, as he proceeded quietly up to his room, perfumed the stairs and lobby with the odour of cigars, which invariably set the three ladies off coughing—for he was never permitted to smoke at home.

But never, not even once, could they accuse him of slipping on the stairs, going to bed with his boots on, or performing any other eccentricity commonly attributed to the excessive use, or abuse rather, of whiskey-toddy.

No, the Buffaloes were as quiet, orderly fellows as you could meet with during a month of Sundays; and when they met once a week at their rooms, passed their time in reading and criticising each other's compositions ; which done, they sang songs, smoked, and sipped their wine or punch, until they felt inclined to separate, and wend their several ways homewards as quietly as good fellows should.

Tom, as we all knew, had a good deal to put up with at home; and when his mother and sisters, having held solemn conclave together, arrived at the conclusion that the only thing that would save their son and brother from perdition and the Buffaloes, was a wife, and told him so one morning at breakfast, he fell into their views much more readily than they had anticipated; for he thought he saw in their proposal a loophole of escape from the domestic tyranny he bad so long quietly endured, but which was daily grow. ing more and more intolerable,

3

“There is only one objection, mother," he remarked, when the three ladies had each had her say on the subject, "and that is that I have not the least idea whom to marry: there isn't a girl I know that any of you would like me to take to wife.”

The three old ladies--the youngest of his sisters was ten years older than Tom, who was just eight-and-twenty-exchanged glances, and the mother, smiling, replied, “I dare say that can be arranged : cannot it? appealing to her daughters, whom she always called, when speaking of them, “the girls."

The girls nodded approvingly; but they were too wary to show their cards; and the subject dropped, because Tom did not care to pursue it, and the ladies deemed it more prudent not to press the matter then.

“Shall you be at home on Thursday evening, Tom ?" inquired Miss Tabitha, the youngest of Tom's sisters, as that young gentle. man was, a few minutes later, rising from the breakfast-table.

Why, no,” replied her brother. “I shall be at the Buffaloes, you know, of course, Tabby."

Three heads were simultaneously tossed into the air, and six nostrils sniffed that element, much as the charger is said to do the battle from afar.

Tom, however, had no present desire for the fray, and saved himself from the volumes of abuse and mournful prediction by a timely retreat; it was not the first time, by a good many, that he had practised the better part of valour, nor would it be the last, for Tom had a born objection to domestic rows.

You may depend upon it, the three ladies had settled all their plans before they broached the subject to their son and brother, especially the mother ; for there is scarcely a woman in the world who can contemplate with equanimity the prospect of her son, especially her only son, entering into the bonds of holy matrimony, unless with a woman of her own choosing, and good old Mrs. Turnpenny was not an exception to the rule; while, on the other hand, sisters are not usually very much attached to their sisters-in-law.

But Mrs. and the Misses Turnpenny had weighed all the pros and cons of the matter thoroughly, and had decided that, much as they would have preferred keeping Tom to themselves, it was better that he should have a wife than be permitted to go to rack and ruin with those shocking Buffaloes; and having arrived at the conclusion that he should marry, they further proceeded to select, from amongst their circle of acquaintances, the particular young lady whom he was to take to wife.

In this respect, too, Tom fell in with the views of his relations much more readily than they had expected. The fact was, he had already, but without in any way making up his mind in the