Curious sensation it is, though. Can you conceive a sword put in on one side of the waist, just above the hip-bone, and drawn through, handle and all, till it passes out at the opposite point?"

"I have felt it twice; and therefore you will be pleased to hold your tongue, and go to bed. Have you had any warnings?"

"Yes, no, that is this morning: but I forgot. Never mind! What matter a hundred years hence? There it is again!-God help me!"

"Humph!" growled Thurnall to himself. "I'd sooner have lost a dozen of these herring-hogs, whom nobody misses, and who are well out of their life-scrape: but the parson, just as he was making a man!"

There is no use in complaints. In half-an-hour Frank is screaming like a woman, though he has bitten his tongue half through to stop his screams.

PAH! Let us escape anywhere for a breath of fresh air, for even the scent of a clean turf. We have been watching saints and martyrs-perhaps not long enough for the good of our souls, but surely too long for the comfort of our bodies. Let us away up the valley, where we shall find, if not indeed a fresh healthful breeze (for the drought lasts on), at least a cool refreshing down-draught from Carcarrow Moor before the sun gets up. It is just half-past four o'clock, on a glorious August morning. We shall have three hours at least before the heavens become one great Dutch-oven again.

We shall have good company, too, in our walk; for here comes Campbell fresh from his morning's swim, swinging up the silent street toward Frank Headley's lodging.

He stops, and tosses a pebble against the window

pane. In a minute or two Thurnall opens the streetdoor and slips out to him.

“Ah, Major! Overslept myself at last; that sofa is wonderfully comfortable. No time to go down and bathe. I'll get my header somewhere up the stream." "How is he?”

“He? sleeping like a babe, and getting well as fast as his soul will allow his body. He has something on his mind. Nothing to be ashamed of, though, I will warrant; for a purer, nobler fellow I never met."

"When can we move him?”

"Oh, to-morrow, if he will agree. You may all depart and leave me and the Government man to make out the returns of killed and wounded. We shall have no more cholera. Eight days without a new case. We shall do now. I'm glad you are coming up with us."

"I will just see the hounds throw off, and then go back and get Headley's breakfast."

"No, no! you mustn't, Sir: you want a day's play." "Not half as much as you. And I am in no hunting mood just now. Do you take your fill of the woods and the streams, and let me see to our patient. I suppose you will be back by noon ?"

Certainly." And the two swing up the strect, and out of the town, along the vale toward Trebooze.

For Trebooze of Trebooze has invited them, and Lord Scoutbush, and certain others, to come out otterhunting; and otter-hunting they will go.

Trebooze has been sorely exercised, during the last fortnight, between fear of the cholera and desire of calling upon Lord Scoutbush-"as I ought to do, of course, as one of the gentry round; he's a Whig, of course, and no more to me than anybody else: but one don't like to let politics interfere;" by which Trebooze glosses over to himself and friends the deep flunkeydom with which he lusteth after a live lord's acquaintance, and one especially in whom he hopes to find even such a one as himself. . . . "Good fellow, I hear he is, too,— good sportsman, smokes like a chimney," and so forth.

So at last, when the cholera has all but disappeared, he comes down to Penalva, and introduces himself, half swaggering, half servile; begins by a string of apologies: for not having called before," Mrs. Trebooze so afraid of infection, you see, my lord," which is a lie: then blunders out a few fulsome compliments to Scoutbush's courage in staying; then takes heart at a little joke of Scoutbush's, and tries the free and easy style; fingers his lordship's high-priced Hudsons, and gives a broad hint that he would like to smoke one on the spot; which hint is not taken, any more than the bet of a "pony which he offers five minutes afterwards, that he will jump his Irish mare in and out of Aberalva pound; is utterly "thrown on his haunches," (as he informs his friend. Mr. Creed afterwards,) by Scoutbush's praise of Tom Thurnall, as an "invaluable man, a treasure in such an out of the way place, and really better company than

ninety-nine men out of a hundred;" recovers himself again when Scoutbush asks after his otter-hounds, of which he has heard much praise from old Tardrew; and launches out once more into sporting conversation of that graceful and lofty stamp which may be perused and perpended in the pages of "Handley Cross," and "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour," books painfully true to that uglier and baser side of sporting life, which their clever author has chosen so wilfully to portray.

So, at least, said Scoutbush to himself, when his visitor had departed.

:

"He's just like a page out of Sponge's Tour, though he's not half as good a fellow as Sponge himself; for Sponge knew he was a snob, and lived up to his calling honestly but this fellow wants all the while to play at being a gentleman; and-Ugh! how the fellow smelt of brandy, and worse! His hand, too, shook as if he had the palsy, and he chattered and fidgetted like a man with St. Vitus's dance."

"Did he, my lord?" quoth Tom Thurnall, when he heard the same, in a very meaning tone.

And Trebooze, "for his part, couldn't make out that lord-uncommonly agreeable, and easy, and all that: but shoves a fellow off, and sets him down somehow, and in such a*** civil way, that you don't know where to have him."

However, Trebooze departed in high spirits; for Lord Scoutbush has deigned to say that he will be