not think much of a great yellow stone, named a carum - gorum, or some such thing, which he had in a snuff-mull, as he called it,-all except M'Whirter, I say, were delighted with it; and Abednego himself, who ought to know, as his father was in the line, told me the jewel was worth at least ten poundsh, and that his governor would give me as much for it.

"That's a proof," says Roundhand, "that Tit's diamond is worth at least thirty;" and we all laughed, and agreed it was.

Now, I must confess that all these praises, and the respect that was paid me, turned my head a little; and as all the chaps said I must have a black satin stock to set the stone off, I was fool enough to buy a stock that cost me five-and-twenty shillings, at Ludlam's, in Piccadilly; for Gus said I must go to the best place, to be sure, and have none of your cheap and common east-end stuff. I might have had one for sixteen and six in Cheapside, every whit as good; but when a young lad becomes vain, and wants to be fashionable, you see he can't help being extravagant.

Our director, Mr. Brough, did not fail to hear of the haunch of venison business, and my relationship with Lady Doldrum and the Right Hon. Edmund Preston; only Abednego, who told him, said I was her ladyship's first cousin; and this made Brough think more of me, and no worse than before.

Mr. B. was, as every body knows, member of parliament for Rottonburgh; and being considered one of the richest men in the city of London, used to receive all the great people of the land at his villa at Fulham; and we often read in the papers of the rare doings going on there.

Well, the pin certainly worked wonders; for, not content merely with making me a present of a ride in a countess's carriage, of a haunch of venison, and two baskets of fruit, and the dinner at Roundhand's above described, my diamond had other honours in store for me, and procured me the honour of an invitation to the house of our director, Mr. Brough.

Once a-year, in June, that honourable gent gave a grand ball at his house at Fulham; and by the ac

counts of the entertainment brought back by one or two of our chaps who had been invited, it was one of the most magnificent things to be seen about London. You saw members of parliament there as thick as pease in July, lords and ladies without end. There was every thing and every body of the tip-top sort; and I have heard that Mr. Gunter, of Berkeley Square, supplied the ices, supper, and footmen,-though of them latter Brough kept a plenty, but not enough to serve the host of people who came to him. The party, it must be remembered, was Mrs. Brough's party, not the gentleman's,-he being in the Dissenting way, would scarcely sanction any entertainments of the kind; but he told his City friends that his lady governed him in every thing; and it was generally observed, that most of them would allow their daughters to go to the ball if asked. On account of the immense number of the nobility which our director assembled together, Mrs. Roundhand I know, for one, would have given one of her ears to go; but, as I have said before, nothing would induce Brough to ask her.

Roundhand himself, and Gutch, nineteenth clerk, son of the brother of an East Indian director, were the only two of our gents invited, as we knew very well, for they had received their invitations many weeks before, and bragged about them not a little. But two days before the ball, and after my diamond-pin had had its due effect upon the gents at the office, Abednego, who had been in the director's room, came to my desk with a great smirk, and said, "Tit, Mr. B. says, that he expects you will come down with Roundhand to the ball on Thursday." I thought Moses was joking,-at any rate, that Mr. B.'s message was rather a queer one; for people don't usually send invitations in that abrupt, peremptory sort of way; but, sure enough, he presently came down himself, and confirmed it, saying, as he was going out of the office, "Mr. Titmarsh, you will come down on Thursday to Mrs. Brough's party, where you will see some relations of

and me, and for which he very generously paid eight shillings.

There is no use to describe the grand gala, nor the number of lamps in the Todge and in the garden, nor the crowd of carriages that came in the gates, nor the troops of curious people outside; nor the ices, fiddlers, wreaths of flowers, and cold supper within. The whole description was beautifully given in a fashionable paper, by a reporter who observed the same from the Yellow Lion over the way, and told it in his journal in the most accurate manner; getting an account of the dresses of the great people from their footmen and coachmen, when they came to the alehouse for their porter. As for the names of the guests, they, you may be sure, found their way to the same newspaper; and a great laugh was had at my expense, because among the titles of the great people mentioned, my name appeared in the list of the "Honourables." Next day, Brough advertised a hundred and fifty guineas reward for an emerald necklace lost at the party of John Brough, Esq., at Fulham." Though some of our people said that no such thing was lost at all, and that Brough only wanted to advertise the magnificence of his society; but this doubt was raised by persons not invited, and envious, no doubt.

Well, I wore my diamond, as you may imagine, and rigged myself in my best clothes, viz. my blue coat and brass buttons before mentioned, nankeen trousers and silk stockings, a white waistcoat, and a pair of white gloves bought for the occasion. But my coat was of country make, very high in the waist and short in the sleeves, and I suppose must look rather odd to some of the great people assembled, for they stared at me a great deal, and a whole crowd formed to sce me dance, which I did to the best of my power, performing all the steps accurately, and with great agility, as I had been taught by our dancing-master in the country.

And with whom do you think I had the honour to dance? With no less a person than Lady Jane Preston, who it appears had just gone out of town, and who shook me most kindly by the hand when she saw me, and asked me to dance with her. We had my Lord Tiptoff and Lady Fanny Rakes for our vis-à-vis.

You should have seen how the people crowded to look at us, and admired my dancing too, for I cut the very best of capers, quite different to the rest of the gents (my lord among the number), who walked through the quadrille as if they thought it a trouble, and stared at my activity with all their might. But when I have a dance, I like to enjoy myself; and Mary Smith often said I was the very best partner at our assemblies. While we were dancing, I told Lady Jane how Roundhand, Gutch, and I, had come down three in a cab, besides the driver; and my account of our adventures made her ladyship laugh, I warrant you. Lucky it was for me that I didn't go back in the same vehicle; for the driver went and intoxicated himself at the Yellow Lion, threw out Gutch and our head clerk as he was driving them back, and actually fought Gutch afterwards, and blacked his eye, because he said that Gutch's red velvet waistcoat frightened the horse.

Lady Jane, however, spared me such an uncomfortable ride home; for she said she had a fourth place in her carriage, and asked me if I would accept it; and positively, at two o'clock in the morning, there was I. after setting the ladies and my lord down, driven to Salisbury Square in a great thundering carriage, with flaming lamps and two tall footmen, who nearly knocked the door and the whole little street down with the noise they made at the wrapper. You should have seen Gus's head peeping out of window in his white nightcap! He kept me up the whole night, telling him about the ball, and the great people I had seen there; and next day he told at the office my stories, with his own usual embroideries upon them.

“Mr. Titmarsh," said Lady Fanny, laughing to me, "who is that great, fat, curious man, the master of the house? Do you know he asked me if you were not related to us? and I said, 'O yes, you were."

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Fanny!" says Lady Jane. "Did not grandmamma say Mr. Titmarsh was her cousin ?"

"Well; but you know that grandmamma's memory is not very good."

"Indeed, you're wrong, Lady Jane," says my lord; "I think it's prodigious."

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Yes, but not very-not very accurate."

No, my lady," says I; "for her ladyship, the Countess of Doldrum, said, if you remember, that my friend Gus Hoskins ——"

"Whose cause you supported so bravely," cries Lady Fanny.

"That my friend Gus is her ladyship's cousin too, which cannot be, for I know all his family; they live in Skinner Street and St. Mary Axe, and are not—not quite so respectable as my relatives."

At this they all began to laugh; and my lord said, rather haughtily,

Depend upon it, Mr. Titmarsh, that Lady Doldrum is no more your cousin than she is the cousin of your friend Mr. Hoskinson."

Hoskins, my lord, and so I told Gus; but you see he is very fond of me, and will have it that I am related to Lady D.: and, say what I will to the contrary, tells the story every where. Though, to be sure," added I, with a laugh," it has gained me no small good in my time." So I described to the party our dinner at Mrs. Roundhand's, which all came from my diamond-pin, and my reputation as a connexion of the aristocracy. Then I thanked Lady Jane handsomely for her magnificent present of fruit and venison, and told her that it had entertained a great number of kind friends of mine, who had drank her ladyship's health with the greatest gratitude.

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A haunch of venison !" cried Lady Jane, quite astonished; indeed, Mr. Titmarsh, I am quite at a loss to understand you."

As we passed a gas lamp, I saw Lady Fanny laughing, as usual, and turning her great, arch, sparkling black eyes at Lord Tiptoff.

"Why, Lady Jane," said he, "if the truth must out, the great haunch of venison trick was one of this young lady's performing. You must know, that I had received the above-named haunch from Lord Guttlebury's park; and, knowing that Preston is not averse to Guttlebury venison, was telling Lady Doldrum (in whose carriage I had a seat that day, as Mr.

Titmarsh was not in the way), that I intended the haunch for your husband's table. Whereupon my Lady Fanny, clapping together her little hands, declared and vowed that the venison should not go to Preston, but should be sent to a gentleman about whose adventures on the day previous we had just been talking,-to Mr. Titmarsh, in fact, whom Preston, as Fanny vowed, had used most cruelly, and to whom, she said, a reparation was due. So my Lady Fanny insists upon our driving straight to my rooms in the Albany (you know I am only to stay in my bachelor's quarters a month longer)—"

"Nonsense!" says Lady Fanny. "Insists upon driving straight to my chambers in the Albany, extracting thence the above-named haunch." Grandmamma was very sorry to part with it," cries Lady Fanny.

"And then she orders us to proceed to Mr. Titmarsh's house in the City, where the venison was left, in company with a couple of baskets of fruit bought at Grange's by Lady Fanny herself."

"And what was more," said Lady Fanny, "I made grandmamma go into Fr- into Lord Tiptoff's rooms, and dictated out of my own mouth the letter which he wrote, and pinned up the haunch of venison that his hideous old housekeeper brought us

I'm quite jealous of her I pinned up the haunch of venison in a copy of the John Bull newspaper."

It had one of the Ramsbottom letters in it, I remember, which Gus and I read on Sunday at breakfast, and we nearly killed ourselves with laughing. The ladies laughed too when I told them this; and goodnatured Lady Jane said she would forgive her sister, and hoped I would too; which I promised to do as often as her ladyship chose to repeat the offence.

I never had any more venison from the family; but I'll tell you what I had. About a month after, came a card of “Lord and Lady Tiptoff," and a great piece of plum-cake, of which, I am sorry to say, Gus ate a great deal too much.

ALL who find pleasure in these faithful delineations of rustic beliefs and manners will remember that, at the conclusion of the Legend of the Mermaid, Mysie, who related it, promised, as a reward for my lending a patient ear, to tell me on a future day her moral and marvellous tale of the Water Kelpie. A full week, with "Will-o'-wisp Wednesday" in it, elapsed before her story came off." I sought her at her house, but she was not there; at last I found her with her companion seated on the gowany brink of the Kelpie Loch itself; the fruit of their mutual labours in a large bottle at their side, with a bit of gauze fastened on the top, for the double purpose of affording air and preventing the escape of "seven dizen," as Mysie declared, "of as bonnie lochleeches as ever drew bad blood frae a good Christian."

"An' what's the laddie laughing at?" inquired Mysie, as I approached: "did ye never see twa auld wives gathering loch-leeches before ?"

"Ye look more like fisher-herons watching eels," I replied, "ye sit so silent and motionless."

"We a' ken that," said Leezie, with a curl of her nose; "didna the gracious Samuel Rutherford, of Kirkmabreek, find out that Solomon's saying to the black-eyed lass of Judah, I'll kiss thee with kisses of my mouth,' had a spiritual meaning? Besides, there's that seemingly loose ballad, called, 'John, come kiss me now,' didna that sound divine, Wedderburn, lay it down like a ripe sheaf on the thrashing-floor, and daud wi' his flail the loose chaff frae about it, ilka blaud rendering it the mair spiritual ?"

"Ye say true," said Mysie; "I didna think, Leezie, woman, ye were sae deeply read. But anent the Water Kelpie, neither Davie Lindsay, nor Allan Ramsay, nor Robin Burns, have sic a tale in a' their aught. But it is a tale that can be tauld more ways than one; sae, Leezie, lass, ye maun set me right when I gae wrang, and throw in here and there a little of the spiritual. And when we are at a halt in the local-the whereabouts, as we ca't-we'se can call Tam Tarstick frae the hill-side, wha swore, when he was found in his neighbour's ewe-bught instead of his ain, that he had only erred in the local !"

"O Mysie, Mysie, ye'll never mend!" said Leezie, in a tone of rebuke" and, what is waur, ye will never begin your tale. See, the sun is already in the western side o' the lift, and where will he be when the story ends?"

Weel, I'll commence at anes," answered Mysie, "though naebody's broth's cooling that I ken of; for it is the easiest of all tales to commence. The hero, as well as the heroine, as they call them, dwalt on the hill-side there ye may see the foundationstanes of their mansion yet amang the braken, and ye may trace where their garden was by the lilies and primroses which bloom there in spring; mony a ane hae I pu'd wï' my ain hands-while the chief actor in the domestic drama, as I hae heard good scholars call it, dwalt at the bottom of this bonnie lake, whose silver water washes our feet - and that was the Kelpie himsel."

"Himsel', woman!" interrupted Leezie; "I wonder ye can speak of a foul heathen fiend as if he were a Christian; and waur than a twalegged fiend, for he was a four-footed ane, and had a mane o' hair down his back wad have stuffed sax cartsaddles. I have as gude as heard him nicher; it was like the cry of a fatherless foal."

"Weel," said Mysie, "ye hae heard mair than I ever heard; yet I canna deny that I hae seen the Kelpie's