Begging his pardon, he looks a good deal more like the lat ter than the former. However

And he walked up and offered his hand, with "How d'e do, Briggs? Who would have thought of our falling from the skies against each other in this fashion?

Mr. Briggs hesitated a moment, and then took ccldly the offered hand.

"Excuse me; but the circumstances of my visit here are too painful to allow me to wish for society."

And Mr. Briggs withdrew, evidently glad to escape.

"Has he vampoosed with the contents of a till, that he wishes so for solitude?" asked Tom; and, shouldering his carpet-bag a second time, with a grim inward laugh, he went to his father's house, and hung up his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk, and walked into the study; and, not finding the old man, stepped through the garden to Mark Armsworth's, and in at the drawing-room window, frightening out of her wits a short, pale, ugly girl of seventeen, whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon recovered her equanimity: he certainly never lost his.

"How d'e do, darling? How you are grown! and how well you look! How's your father? I hadn't anything particular to do, so thought I'd come home and see you

And Mary, who had longed to throw her arms round his neck, as of old, and was restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now, called in her father, and all the household; and after a while the old doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who, whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and delight with the most provoking coolness.

Nevertheless, though his feelings were not "demonstralive," as fine ladies say now-a-days, he evidently had some left in some corner of his heart; for after the fatted calf was eaten, and they were all settled in the doctor's study, it came out that his carpet-bag contained little but presents, and those valuable ones-rare minerals from the Ural for his father; a pair of Circassian pistols for Mark; and for little Mary, to her astonishment, a Russian malacuite bracelet, at which Mary's eyes opened wide, and old Mark said

Pretty fellow you are, to go fooling your money away like that! What did that gimcrack cost, pray, sir?"

That is no concern of yours, sir, or of mine either, for I didn't pay for it."

"O!" said Mary, doubtingly.

No, Mary. I killed a giant, who was carrying off a beautiful princess; and this, you see, he wore as a ring on one of his fingers: so I thought it would just suit your wrist."

"O, Tom - Mr. Thurnall - what nonsense!"

"Come, come,' said his father; "instead of telling us. this sort of stories, you ought to give an account of yourself, as you seem quite to forget that we have not heard from you for more than two years.'

"Whew! I wrote," said Tom, "whenever I could. However, you can have all my letters in one now."

So they sat round the fire, and Tom gave an account of himself; while his father marked with pride that the young man had grown and strengthened in body and in mind; and that under that nonchalant, almost cynical outside, the heart still beat honest and kindly. For, before Tom begun, he would needs draw his chair close to his father's, and half-whispered to him,

"This is very jolly. I can't be sentimental, you know. Knocking about the world has beat all that out of me; but it is very comfortable, after all, to find one's self safe with a dear old daddy, and a good coal fire."

"Which of the two could you best do without?"

"Well, one takes things as one finds them. It don't do to look too deeply into one's feelings.. Like chemicals, the more you analyze them the worse they smell."

So Tom began his story.

"You heard from me at Bombay; after I'd been up to the Himalaya with an old Mumpsimus friend!"

"Yes."

"Well, I worked my way to Suez on board a ship whose doctor had fallen ill; and then I must needs see a little of Egypt; and there robbed was I, and nearly murdered too; but I take a good deal of killing."

"I'll warrant you do," said Mark, looking at him with pride.

"So I begged my way to Cairo; and there I picked up a Yankee - a New Yorker, made of money, who had a yacht at Alexandria, and travelled en prince; and nothing would serve him but I must go with him to Constantinople; but

there he and I quarrelled — more fools both of us! I wrote to you from Constantinople."

"We never got the letter."

"I can't help that; I wrote. But there I was on the wide world again. So I took up with a Russian prince, whom I met at a gambling-table in Pera, a mere boy, but such a plucky one, and went with him to Circassia, and up to Astrakhan, and on to the Kirghis steppes; and there I did see snakes."

"Snakes?" said Mary. "I should have thought you had seen plenty in India already."

Yes, Mary; but these were snakes spiritual and metaphorical. For, poking about where we had no business, Mary, the Tartars caught us, and tied us to their horses' tails, after giving me this scar across the cheek, and taught us to drink mares' milk, and to do a good deal of dirty work beside. So there we stayed with them six months, and observed their manners, which were none, and their customs, which were disgusting, as the midshipman said in his diary; and had the honor of visiting a pleasant little place in No-man's Land, called Khiva, which you may find in your atlas, Mary; and of very nearly being sold for slaves into Persia, which would not have been pleasant; and, at last, Mary, we ran away -- or, rather, rode away on two razor-backed Calmuc ponies, and got back to Russia, via Orenburg, for which consult your atlas again; so the young prince was restored to the bosom of his afflicted family; and a good deal of trouble I had to get him safe there, for the poor boy's health gave way. They wanted me to stay with them, and offered to make my fortune." "I'm so glad you did n't!" said Mary.

"Well; I wanted to see little Mary again, and two worthy old gentlemen beside, you see. However, those Russians are generous enough. They filled my pockets, and heaped me with presents; that bracelet among them. What's more, Mary, I've been introduced to old Nick him. self, and can testify, from personal experience, to the correctness of Shakspeare's opinion that the prince of darkess is a gentleman."

"And now you are going to stay at home?" asked the doctor.

Well, if you 'll take me in, daddy, I'll send for my traps from London, and stay a month or so."

"A month?" cried the forlorn father.

"Well, daddy, you see, there is a chance of more fight

ing in Mexico, and I shall see such practice there, beside meeting old friends who were with me in Texas. And and I've got a little commission toc, down in Georgia, that I should like to go and do."

"What is that?"

"Well, it's a long story, and a sad one; but there was a poor Yankee surgeon with the army in Circassia, a Southerner, and a very good fellow, and he had taken a fancy to some colored girl at home. Poor fellow, he used to go half mad about her sometimes, when he was talking to me, for fear she should have been sold, sent to the New Orleans market, or some other devilry; and what could I say to comfort him? Well, he got his mittimus by one of Schamyl's bullets, and when he was dying he made me promise I had n't the heart to refuse- to take all his savings, which he had been hoarding for years for no other purpose, and see if I could n't buy the girl, and get her away to Canada. I was a fool for promising. It was no concern of mine; but the poor fellow would n't die in else. So what must be, must."

peace

"O, go! go!" said Mary. "You will let him go, Doctor Thurnall, and see the poor girl free? Think how dreadful it must be to be a slave."

"I will, my little Miss Mary; and for more reasons than you think of. Little do you know how dreadful it is to be a slave."

"That's a queer

Hum!" said Mark Armsworth. story. Tom, have you got the poor fellow's money? Did n't lose it when you were taken by those Tartars?"

"Not I. I was n't so green as to carry it with me. It ought to have been in England six months ago. My only fear is, it's not enough."

"Ilum!" said Mark; "how much more do you think you'll want?"

"Heaven knows. There is a thousand dollars; but if she be half as beautiful as poor Wyse used to swear she was, I may want more than double that."

"If you do, pay it, and I'll pay you again. No, by George!" said Mark, "no one shall say that while Mark Armsworth had a balance at his banker's he let a poor girl" and, recollecting Mary's presence, he finished his sentence by sundry stamps and thumps on the table.

"You would soon exhaust your balance, if you set to work to free all poor girls who are in the same case in Georgia," said the doctor.

"Well, what of that? Them I don't know of, and so I an't responsible for them; but this one I do know of, and 80 - there, I can't argue; but, Tom, if you want the money, you know where to find it."

"Very good. By the by-I forgot it till this moment who should come down in the coach with me but the lost John Briggs!"

"He is come too late, then," said the doctor. "His poor father died this morning."

"Ah! then Briggs knew that he was ill? That explains the Manfredic mystery and gloom with which he greeted me."

"I cannot tell. He has written from time to time, but he has never given any address; so that no one could write in return."

"He may have known. He looked very downcast. Perhaps that explains his cutting me dead."

"Cut you?" cried Mark. "I dare say he's been doing something he 's ashamed of, and don't want to be recognized. That fellow has been after no good all this while, I'll warrant. I always say he 's connected with the swell mob, or croupier at a gambling-table, or something of that kind. Don't you think it's likely, now?"

Mark was in the habit of so saying for the purpose of tormenting the doctor, who held stoutly to his old belief that John Briggs was a very clever man, and would turn up some day as a distinguished literary character.

"Well," said Tom, "honest or not, he 's thriving; came down inside the coach, dressed in the distinguished foreigner style, with lavender kid gloves and French boots."

"Just like a swell pickpocket," said Mark. "I always told you so, Thurnall."

"He had the old Byron collar and Raphael hair, though." Nasty, effeminate, un-English foppery!" grumbled Mark; 66 so he may be in the scribbling line, after all." "I'll go and see if I can find him," quoth the doctor. "Bother you," said Mark, "always running out o' nights after somebody else's business, instead of having a jolly evening. You stay, Tom, like a sensible fellow, and tell me and Mary some more travellers' lies. Had much sporting, boy?"

"Hum! I've shot and hunted every beast, I think, shootable and huntable, from a humming-bird to an ele phant; and I had some splendid fishing in Canada; but

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