tation in fleshing their maiden weapons to save him from the treachery of sleep.

On the whole, poor Blandford was in doleful dumps; and, it must be confessed, that he longed for light and morning quite as eagerly and sincerely as Miss Juliet Capulet once wished for night and darkness, on a rather particular occasion, which the judicious Reader will doubtless well remember.

The first faint glimpse of dawning day served as a summons for the fleas and reptiles to remit their laudable exertions;-and, relieved from the impressment of their importunities, Blandford fell fast asleep, just at the moment that he wished to avoid it.

At last, when he did broad daylight,-as far at

awake, it was

least as could

be judged from the few scattered rays, admitted by the two port-hole-like openings

in the wall, that served as an apology for windows. His eye too was grown accustomed to the obscurity of the prison, and now the damp, the vermin, and general wretchedness of the place, were more than sufficiently apparent. The only object, however, that seemed worthy of his attention, was his fellow prisoner, whose heavy breathing on the previous night had so much excited his curiosity.

This personage was seated on the low oaken bedstead we have before alluded to, and eating a most substantial breakfast of wild boar ham and cold turkey, with coffee, rich as the incense of Arabia! Blandford thought that all this luxury was rather odd in such a place; but the man's dress was something stranger, for he was wrapt and muffled up in every possible way to keep out the cold; and with such an infinite variety of garments, that it would have puzzled the most

experienced sage in Petticoat Lane, to have found due terms for their description. The countenance, too, was equally a matter of so much so indeed, that Blandford had not as yet any idea that the stranger was his uncle.

disguise, and

From time, and perhaps still more from having been so long precluded from the light of day, Kenrick's eyebrows were grown white and bushy,—and as a conjuror without a beard would be a mere nonentity; he had suffered this goatish appendage, in his own instance, to gain the most ample dimensions, and no man could be richer in that hairy claim to veneration;-but still there was the same low malevolent scowl upon the forehead, and the same quick sidelong twinkle of the eye,-lying, as it were, perdue for mischief.

The creature comforts' were, as we know, with Kenrick matters of the most essential

moment; and the luxuriant breakfast before him was actually consumed, to the very picking of the bones, before he felt himself at leisure to cast a glance on his recently awakened companion; and when he did

$0,

Reader, has the crackling ice given way beneath your skait, as you were dashing under a bridge?—or, have you in a moment of rustic dalliance, when the new-mown hay was smelling sweeter than a couch of roses, felt the cold envenomed adder wriggling to your touch? Either would give you an idea, and but a faint one, of the panic that seized on the astounded Kenrick, when he saw that the stranger and his nephew were the

same.

Fully conscious of his unrepented villany, and aware of the summary vengeance which in such a case he would himself have inflicted, Kenrick's very teeth chattered with

involuntary tremors, as he gazed on the muscular form of Blandford, and remembered that his nephew had the power to brain him in a moment.

Frank, too, by this time had discovered the person of his uncle:-and if surprize had at first suspended every other feeling, soon succeeded by a smile of ineffable contempt!

it was

Finding himself unharmed, Kenrick recovered his serenity; and although he had not the audacity to address his injured nephew, yet he already began to plot some fresh deceit. His object was at least to make him useful,-and he thought that this would soon be within his reach, for silence between two men in a prison, however great their previous cause for hatred, could hardly be expected to endure.

Both had now for hours preserved a sullen "non-intercourse,' during which Kenrick