be expected, was not in the most amiable humour imaginable, having had to restrain the impatience of two fiery horses for a space of time nearly approaching a quarter of an hour.

66 'Really, Lawless," I began, "I am quite ashamed."

:

"Oh, you are, are you?" was the rejoinder. "I should rather think you ought to be, too. But it's always the way with you fellows who pretend to be steady and moral, and all that sort of thing when you do find a chance of getting into mischief, you're worse a great deal than a man like myself, for instance, who, without being bothered with any particular principles of any kind, has what I call a general sense of fitness and propriety, and does his dissipation sensibly and correctly. But to go tearing off like a lunatic after the first petticoat you see fluttering among the bushes in a gentleman's park, and leaving your friend to hold in two thorough-bred peppery devils, that are enough to pull a man's arms off, for above a quarter of an hour, it's too bad a great deal. Why, just before you came, I fully expected when that mare was plunging about on her hind legs

"How lovely she looked!" interrupted I, thinking aloud.

"You thought so, did you?" rejoined Lawless; "I wish you'd just had to hold her; her mouth's as hard

"Her mouth is

perfect."

perfect," replied I, emphatically; "quite

"Well, that's cool," muttered Lawless; "he'll put me in a passion directly;-pray, sir, may I ask how on earth you come to know anything about her mouth ?"

"How do I know anything about her mouth!" exclaimed I. "Did I not watch with delight its ever-varying expression ?—mark each movement of those beautiful lips, and drink in every syllable that fell from them ?—not observe her mouth! Think you, when we have been conversing together for the last quarter of an hour, that I could fail to do so?"

"Oh, he's gone stark staring mad!" exclaimed Lawless; "strait-waistcoats, Bedlam, and all that sort o'thing, you know; -conversing with my bay mare for the last quarter of an hour, and drinking in every syllable that fell from her beautiful lips-oh, he's raving!"

"What do you mean ?" said I, at length awaking to some consciousness of sublunary affairs—" Your mare!—who ever thought of your mare? it's Miss Saville I'm talking about."

"Miss Saville!" repeated Lawless; giving vent to a long whistle,

M

expressive of incredulity; "why, you don't mean to say you've been talking to Miss Saville all this time, do you?"

"To be sure I have," replied I; "and a very interesting and agreeable conversation it was too."

"Well," exclaimed Lawless, after a short pause; "all the luck in this matter seems to fall to your share; so the sooner I get out of it the better. It won't break my heart, that's one comfort;—if the young woman has the bad taste to prefer you to me, why, it can't be helped, you know ;-but what did she say for herself, eh ?"

"She sent you her forgiveness, for one thing,” replied I; and I then proceeded to relate such particulars of the interview as I considered expedient; which recital, and our remarks thereupon, furnished conversation during the remainder of our drive.

CHAPTER XIX.

TURNING THE TABLES.

"You should also make no noise in the streets.'

'You may stay him.'

'Nay, by're lady, that I think he cannot.'

'Five shillings to one on't with any man that knows the statutes, he may stay him. His wits are not so blunt as, God help, I would desire they were. It is an offence to stay a man against his will. Dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! but, masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet for get not that I am an ass."- Much Ado About Nothing.

ABOUT a week had elapsed after the events which I have just recorded, when one morning, shortly before my return to Cambridge, I received a letter from Coleman, detailing the finale of the bellringing affair. It ran as follows:

MY DEAR FRANK,-Doubtless you are, or ought to be, very anxious to hear how I contrived to get out of the scrape into which you and the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common misdemeanor. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by misfortune, and, as dangers thickened around me, I bore up against them bravely, like -like-(was it Julius Cæsar or Coriolanus who did that sort of thing?) but never mind-like a Roman brick, we'll say; the particular brick is quite immaterial, but I must beg you to believe the likeness was something striking. To descend to particulars.Hostilities were commenced by that old ass, Mayor Dullmug, who took out a summons against me for creating a riot and disturbance in the town, and, the first day the bench sat, I was marched off by two policemen, and locked up in a little dirty room, to keep cool till their worships were ready to discuss me. Well, there I sat, kicking my heels, and chuckling over a heart-rending little scene I had just gone through with my mother, whose dread of the terrors of the law was greatly increased by the very vague ideas she possessed of the extent of its powers. The punishment she had settled in her

own mind as likely to be awarded me was transportation, and her farewell address was as follows :-"If they should be cruel enough to order you to be transported for fourteen years, Freddy, my dear, I shall try to persuade your father (though he's just like a savage North American Indian about you) to get it changed 'for life' instead, for they always die of the yellow fever for the sharks to eat them, when they've been over there three or four years; and four years are better than fourteen, though bad's the best, and I'm a miserable woman. I read all about it last week in one of Captain Marryatt's books, and very shocking I thought it."-Having ventured to hint that, if I was carried off by the yellow fever at the end of a year or two, the length of my sentence would not signify much to me when I was dead, I was rebuked with, "Don't talk in that shocking way, Frederick, as if you were a heathen, in your situation, and I hearing you your collect every Sunday, besides Mrs. Hannah More, who might have been a saint if ever there was one, or anything else she liked, with her talents, only she was too good for this wicked world, and so she went to a better, and wrote that charming book 'Celebs in Search of a Wife.""-Oh! my poor dear mother's queer sentences! I was becoming shockingly tired of my own company, when it occurred to me that it would be the correct thing to carve my name on the Newgate stone, à la Jack Sheppard; and I was just putting a few finishing strokes to the N of Coleman, wherewith, in characters at least six inches long, I had embellished a very conspicuous spot over the chimney-piece, when I was surprised “with my chisel so fine, tra la,” (i.e. with a red hot poker which I had been obliged to put up with instead, it being the only implement attainable,) by the officials, who came to summon me, and who did not appear in the slightest degree capable of appreciating the beauties of my performance. By them I was straightway conducted into the awful presence of sundry elderly gentlemen, rejoicing in heads all more or less bald, and faces expressing various degrees of solemn stupidity, who in their proper persons constituted "the bench." Before these grave and reverend signiors did Master Dullmug and his satellites,

"Then and there,

Rehearse and declare "

all my heinous crimes, offences, and misdemeanours; whereupon the aforesaid signiors did solemnly shake their bald heads, and appear exceedingly shocked and particularly puzzled. Well, at last I was called upon for my defence, and, having made up my

mind for some time what line I would take, I cut the matter very short, by owning to have assisted in ringing the bells, which I confessed was an act of folly, but nothing more, and that the idea of its constituting an offence punishable by law was absurd in the extreme. This sent them to book, and, after turning over sundry ponderous tomes, and consulting various statutes of all sorts and sizes, besides whispering together, and shaking their heads once and again, till I began to fear that their necks would be dislocated, they arrived at the conclusion that I was right, or thereabouts. This fact, the eldest, most bald, and most stupid of the party, chosen by common consent, doubtless in virtue of these attributes, as spokesman, proceeded to communicate to me, in a very prosy harangue, to which he appended a lecture—a sort of stock article, which he evidently kept constantly on hand, with blanks which could be filled up to suit any class of offenders. In this harangue he pointed out the dangers of juvenile tricks, and the evils of dissipation, winding up with the assurance that, as I seemed deeply sensible of the error of my ways, they, the magistrates, would, on my making a suitable apology to that excellent public functionary the Mayor of Hillingford, graciously deign to overlook my misconduct. During his long-winded address, a new idea struck me, and, when he had concluded, I inquired, with all due respect, whether "I was to understand that it was quite certain I had committed no offence punishable by law ?" To this he replied, "that I might set my mind completely at ease upon that point; that though, morally speaking, I had been guilty of a very serious misdemeanor, in the eye of the law I was perfectly innocent." "In that case, gentlemen,” replied I, "the liberty of the subject has been infringed; I have been kept in illegal confinement for some hours, and I believe I have my remedy in an action for false imprisonment against Mr. Dullmug. Does not the law bear me out in what I state?" Again they had recourse to their books, and were unwillingly forced to confess that I was right. "Then," continued I, "so far from making any apology to Mr. Dullmug, unless that gentleman consents to beg my pardon, and give me a written apology for the unjust and illegal prosecution to which he has subjected me, I shall at once take the necessary steps to proceed against him." Oh! Frank, I would have given something to have had you there, old boy! when I announced this determination: there was such a shindy as I never before witnessed: old Dullmug was furious, and vowed he'd never apologize: I declared, if he didn't, nothing should