Seaforth followed his friend's advice, and the next morning came down to breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the seams were yet in rerum naturá, and adorned the person of their lawful proprietor.

Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against self-gratulation before we are quite "out of the wood."-Seaforth was yet within its verge.

**

A rap at Tom Ingoldsby's door the next morning startled him as he was shaving: he cut his chin.

"Come in, and be d-d to you!" said the martyr, pressing his thumb on the wounded epidermis. The door opened and exhibited Mr. Barney Maguire. "Well, Barney, what is it?" quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular of his visitant.

"Well, what does he want?"

"The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour."

66

Why, you don't mean to tell me- By Heaven, this is too good!" shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. "Why, Barney, you don't mean to say the ghost has got them again?"

Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility; the cast of his countenance was decidedly serious.

"Faith, then, it's gone they are, sure enough. Hasn't meself been looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter of that, and divel a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at all: I'm bothered entirely!"

"Harkye! Mr. Barney," said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and letting a crimson stream "incarnadine the multitudinous" lather that plastered his throat,-" this may be all very well with your master, but you don't humbug me, sir: tell me instantly what have you done with the clothes?"

This abrupt transition from "lively to severe" certainly took Maguire by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman's gentleman.

"Me? is it meself, then, that's the ghost to your honour's thinking?" said he, after a moment's pause, and with a slight shade of indignation in his tones; "is it I would stale the master's things,-and what would I do with them ?"

"That you best know: what your purpose is I can't guess, for I don't think you mean to 'stale' them, as you call it; but that you are concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this blood! -give me a towel, Barney."

Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. "As I've a sowl, your honour," said he solemnly, "little it is meself knows of the matter; and after what I seen

"What you've seen? Why, what have you seen? Barney, I don't want to inquire into your flirtations; but don't suppose you can palm off your saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!"

"Then, as sure as your honour's standing there, I saw him; and why wouldn't I, when Miss Pauline was to the fore as well as meself, and

"Get along with your nonsense,-leave the room, sir!"

"But the master?" said Barney imploringly; " and the breeches?— sure he'll be catching cowld !"

"Take that, rascal!" replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons at, rather than to, him; "but don't suppose, sir, you shall carry on your tricks with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate."

Barney's eye flashed fire, he stood erect and was about to speak; but, mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.

"Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, "this is now past a joke; to-day is the last of my stay, for, notwithstanding the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend; in the mean time tell me candidly, I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend, am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in

"No, by Heaven! Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself; and if your servant"Not he: if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it." "If there be a trick? why, Charles, do you think

"I know not what to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers; nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."

"Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will-But hush! here are the girls and my father. I will carry off the females, and leave you a clear field with the Governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards."

Tom's diversion was successful: he carried off the ladies en masse to look at a remarkable specimen of the class Dodecandria Monogynia, which they could not find; while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried "the Governor's" outworks by a coup de main. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack; suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffydown-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own.

"What was the world to them,

Its noise, its nonsense, and its breeches' all?"

Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night as happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not so Tom Ingoldsby: the mystery-for mystery there evidently was -had not only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of the previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was undisguised. To-night he would "ensconce himself"-not indeed "behind the arras," for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed to

the wall, but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the room, and, by leaving the door ajar, would give its occupant a view of all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghosthunter take up a position, with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.

At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his concealment, the lieutenant enter his room; and, after taking a few turns in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his thoughts were mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed slowly to disrobe himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk stock, were gradually discarded; the green morocco slippers were kicked off, and then-ay, and then-his countenance grew grave; it seemed to occur to him all at once that this was his last stake,-nay, that the very breeches he had on were not his own,-that to-morrow morning was his last, and that if he lost them- A glance showed that his mind was made up; he replaced the single button he had just subducted, and threw himself upon the bed in a state of transition, half chrysalis, half grub.

Wearily did Tom Ingoldsby watch the sleeper by the flickering light of the night-lamp, till the clock, striking one, induced him to increase the narrow opening which he had left for the purpose of observation. The motion, slight as it was, seemed to attract Charles's attention; for he raised himself suddenly to a sitting posture, listened for a moment, and then stood upright upon the floor. Ingoldsby was on the point of discovering himself, when, the light flashing full upon his friend's countenance, he perceived that, though his eyes were open, "their sense was shut," that he was yet under the influence of sleep. Seaforth advanced slowly to the toilet, lit his candle at the lamp that stood on it, then, going back to the bed's foot, appeared to search eagerly for something which he could not find. For a few moments he seemed restless and uneasy, walking round the apartment and examining the chairs, till, coming fully in front of a large swingglass that flanked the dressing-table, he paused, as if contemplating his figure in it. He now returned towards the bed, put on his slippers, and, with cautious and stealthy steps, proceeded towards the little arched doorway that opened on the private staircase.

As he drew the bolt, Tom Ingoldsby emerged from his hiding-place; but the sleep-walker heard him not: he proceeded softly down stairs, followed at a due distance by his friend, opened the door which led out upon the gardens, and stood at once among the thickest of the shrubs, which there clustered round the base of a corner turret, and screened the postern from common observation. At this moment Ingoldsby had nearly spoiled all by making a false step: the sound attracted Seaforth's attention,-he paused and turned; and, as the full moon shed her light direct upon his pale and troubled features, Tom marked, almost with dismay, the fixed and rayless appearance of

"There was no speculation in those orbs
That he did glare withal."

The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure him; he turned aside, and, from the midst of a thickset laurustinus,

drew forth a gardener's spade, shouldering which he proceeded with greater rapidity into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain point, where the earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he set himself heartily to the task of digging; till, having thrown up several shovelfuls of mould, he stopped, flung down his tool, and very composedly began to disencumber himself of his pantaloons.

Up to this moment Tom had watched him with a wary eye; he now advanced cautiously, and, as his friend was busily engaged in disentangling himself from his garment, made himself master of the spade. Seaforth, meanwhile, had accomplished his purpose; he stood for a moment with

"His streamers waving in the wind,"

occupied in carefully rolling up the small-clothes into as compact a form as possible, and all heedless of the breath of heaven, which might certainly be supposed at such a moment, and in such a plight, to "visit his frame too roughly."

He was in the act of stooping low to deposit the pantaloons in the grave which he had been digging for them, when Tom Ingoldsby came close behind him, and with the flat of the spade

The shock was effectual; never again was Lieutenant Seaforth known to act the part of a somnambulist. One by one, his breeches, his trousers, his pantaloons, his silk-net tights, his patent cords, and his showy greys with the broad red stripe of the Bombay Fencibles, were brought to light, rescued from the grave in which they had been buried, like the strata of a Christmas pie; and, after having been well aired by Mrs. Botherby, became once again effective.

The family, the ladies especially, laughed; Barney Maguire cried "Botheration!" and Ma'mselle Pauline, "Mon Dieu!"

Charles Seaforth, unable to face the quizzing which awaited him on all sides, started off two hours earlier than he had proposed: he soon returned, however; and having, at his father-in-law's request, given up the occupation of Rajah hunting and shooting Nabobs, led his blushing bride to the altar.

Mr. Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged at the Grand Junction Meeting of Sçavans, then congregating from all parts of the known world, in the city of Dublin. His essay, demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity, a little too much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the Bog of Allen,-is highly spoken of, and, it is supposed, will obtain a Bridgewater prize.

Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as bridemaids on the occasion the former wrote an epithalamium, and the latter cried "Lassy me!" at the clergyman's wig. But as of these young ladies, of the fair widow, Mr. Sucklethumbkin, Mrs. Peters and her P. we may have more to say hereafter, we take our leave for the present; assuring our pensive public that Mr. and Mrs. Seaforth are living together quite as happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond of each other, can possibly do; and that since the day of his marriage Charles has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors o' nights, though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim of young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair Caroline does still occasionally take advantage of it so far as to "slip on the Breeches."

his

THE clubs of London! I recollect once reading a book so called; but as for any bonâ fide information touching the soi-disant social assemblies, I might as well have been perusing the Shaster, or reading the Florentine copy of the Pandects! The clubs of London afford,

as I have reason to know, ample material for the most abundant fun; but they who expect to find it at Crockford's, the Athenæum, and other maisons de jeu, where yawning dandies, expert chevaliers, old men of the town, roués of all sorts,

Mingle, mingle, mingle,

As they mingle may,

will be wofully disappointed. The clubs, par excellence, take them one and all,-from the Oriental, stuck, with a due disposition and attention to habits of Eastern indolence, in the dullest corner of the dullest square in London, down to, or up to, I care not which, the staring bow-windowed Omnibus Union in Cockspur-street,-are all alike destitute of the requisite material. I perhaps may have a touch at them in the middle of the session and season, when the élite of the club-men are in town, and when their sayings and doings may by possibility be worth recording, even if it were only to have a laugh over them. But, as Copp says, "let that pass for the present." The clubs that I intend to introduce to the readers of the Miscellany are certain of those convivial associations composed of the middlemen of society in the metropolis, who assemble on certain stated nights in the week to sing songs, smoke pipes, and imbibe moisture in the shape of divers goes of spirit and pints of ale. My reminiscences of these assemblies, I think, would fill a goodly tome. To begin with the last, Hebrew fashion. It was my lot one evening, a short time since, to be introduced by Mr. Timmins, my landlord, who, seeing I was rather low-spirited, volunteered the invitation, to a social community called the " WIDE AWAKE CLUB."

"Sir," said Mr. Timmins,-a very worthy knight of the needle, who called me "the genelman wot lodges in my first floor," (whether up or down the chimney, deponent sayeth not,) - "you looks werry oncomfutable this here nasty evening. Prowisin it ain't takin' of too great a liberty, and you feel noways disinclined, I think an hour or two at our club-(I have the privilege of introducing a wisitor wot I can answer for in regard to respectability)-might do you good."

"And pray, Mr. Timmins, "what is the character of your club ?" -"Oh! sir, the character of our club is on-doubted, sir; we are all men of experence, sir: no one is admitted a member onless he shows he is a wide awake cove."

"What do you mean by a wide awake cove," said I, "Mr. Timmins?"-" Vy," said Timmins, "there's no von hellgibble to be a member on our society but what gets a woucher from a member that he has a summut to say, and prove wot has made him wide awake,— that is to say, more up and down to the ways of the world than the generality of people, by experence."

"You mean, if I understand you rightly, Mr. Timmins, that your