visible; and need I say, that on it my eyes were strained, and that there every thought was centred?

66

Well, Harry," continued Sir Cæsar, "I moved along a corduroy road with open files, until we came in front of weedy morass-never keep close order in a wood, you know-when suddenly the Indian guide, pointing to the canes, and putting his finger to his nose, exclaimed, Him there!' I desired the company to extend right and left, and each man cover himself with a tree, while, with the centre files, I should feel my way through the reeds. I had hardly given the order, when crack went a rifle, and the bullet peeled a pinestump immediately behind me. Says Serjeant Kelly-"

"By heavens! there she is standing on the tower. My dear uncle, move cautiously through the canes, and I'll be back before you deforce the Kentucky men."

I seized my hat-rushed from the roomand while Sir Cæsar registered an oath in

heaven affirming my insanity, I was hurrying to the beach, to feast my eyes upon the angel form of the proprietrix of Pompey.

The street shut out the tower, and when I cleared it, the lady of my love had disappeared. Well, she might soon take look-out duty again, and I would observe the fortress from a distance. Three hours passed, while, like the sentry of an outlying picket, I kept my eye upon the fortress-now dipped beneath the shelter of a sand-ridge, and again closing nearer to the place under cover of a bathing-box. Not a petticoat appeared upon the leads and I returned to the Yellow Lion, sadder but not wiser than when I left it.

"As I told you, Harry," resumed mine uncle, pushing a bottle of port across the table, which he was drinking in honour of his convalescence, and directly in contradiction to medical admonition, "Serjeant Kelly remarked that he had seen a sparkle like a musket's in a thicket on my left. 'Oh, ho,' says I, they want to get us between the

brushwood and the canes-but we'll outflank Master Jonathan. Take ten files, and get well in the rear of-""

"The lady on the tower!" I exclaimed, springing up, and once more rushing towards the beach.

Alas! this effort to view the sylph of the sands in "garish daylight," was bootless as the former, and infinitely more tantalizing. As I regained sight of the tower, a female form moved over the platform, and slowly disappeared-in a minute melting into air, or rather leisurely descending the staircase. Another glance as the loved form crossed the turret-window-and I was "left lamenting."

All this was torturous. To enhance my misery, I had a distant glance at a heaven, from which, like an excluded Peri, I had been interdicted. The agony of disappointment was deplorable; and a pack of unsentimental savages had invaded the sand-hills, and added to my despair. A sour-looking spider-brusher on my left was warning a

ricketty three-year-old against a tumble; while a nursery-governess on the right, late for an appointment with a nice young man, who, now and again, made himself visible on a distant sand-hill, whipped her interesting charge to increase his velocity of motion. Endeavouring to escape these nuisances, I retreated upon a nondescript building, that I should have supposed had been intended for a pigeon-house, but which the owner designated a pagoda. Within, sundry young ladies were seated-one, engaged working a scripture scene in Berlin wool; another, reading "Delicate Distress;" and a third, crying at the catastrophe.

"Letty!" exclaimed the fair reader, letting the book fall upon the floor as I passed the window, "that's the young man that keeps the hatter's shop in Bold Street. Lord! I wonder if he's married!"

Was there ever such a persecuted wretch? First to be crossed in love, and afterwards mistaken for a hatter! I returned to the

Yellow Lion, suffering under the double infliction of wounded pride and a broken heart; and, determining to glean some knowledge of my sweet incognita, summoned mine host to a private interview in the back bar.

From Boniface I learned the secret history of the families, but nothing that could throw light upon my love. Like the houses of Montagu and Capulet, the tower and the pagoda were at feud, the lord of the former being an iron-master from Wolverhampton-the owner of the latter a bridle-cutter from Bradburn. Both were warm men in the parlance of the money-market; and, if men are wealthy, why should they not show that they are so? The iron-master had a fair daughter, and the man of leather was equally blessed. young ladies doted upon the sea their mammas declared bathing would be the life of them-and in due time, and by a sort of mutual impulse, the sires of both decided on the erection of a marine villa, and, by an unhappy accident, selected adjacent plots

The