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yours, warning your fellows (if you have a fellow) how they croak their comfortable wickedness to raving heads and stricken hearts. What then?

The words rose up in Trotty’s breast, as if they had been spoken by some other voice within him. Alderman Cute pledged himself to Mr. Fish that he would assist him in break­ing the melancholy catastrophe to Sir Joseph when the day was over. Then, before they parted, wringing Mr. Fish’s hand in bitterness of soul, he said. “The most respectable of men!” And added that he hardly knew (not even he), why such afflictions were allowed on earth.

“It’s almost enough to make one think, if one didn’t know better,” said Alderman Cute, “that at times some motion of a capsizing nature was going on in things, which affected the general economy of the social fabric. Deedles Brothers!”

The skittle-playing came off with immense success. Sir Joseph knocked the pins about quite skilfully; Master Bowley took an innings at a shorter distance also; and everybody said that now, when a Baronet and the Son of a Baronet played at skittles, the country was coming round again, as fast as it could come.

At its proper time, the Banquet was served up. Trotty in­ voluntarily repaired to the Hall with the rest, for he felt himself conduced thither by some stronger impulse than his own free will. The sight was gay in the extreme; the ladies were very handsome; the visitors delighted, cheerful, and good-tempered.