dom Sawin, till you 'd learnt a thing or two!" But blandly still he went on.

"Try the dumb-bells, then. Nothing like them for opening your chest. And do get a high desk made, and stand to your writing, instead of sitting." And Tom actually made Vavasour promise to do both, and bade him farewell with,

"Now, I'll send you up a little tonic, and trouble you with no more visits till you send for me. I shall see by one glance at your face whether you are following my prescriptions. And, I say, I would n't meddle with those opiates any more; try good malt and hops instead."

"Those who drink beer think beer," said Elsley, smiling, for he was getting more hopeful of himself, and his terrors were vanishing beneath Tom's skilful management.

"And those who drink water think water. The Elizabethans Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess-worked on beef and ale; and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth? Believe me, to write well you must live well. If you take it out of your brain you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try for yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband, covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill as he really was, and so nursed and petted him that he felt himself, for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels you might make us all!

"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of mine; but, as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."

Tom went straight home, showed the blacksinith how to make a pair of dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the next morning, with directions to be used for half an hour morning and evening.

And something—whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or wholesome fear of the terrible doctor - kept Elsley for the next month in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.

Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that he had something to learn from the

other. Elsley improved daily in health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received from her after a while this, amid much more—for fancy is not exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.

I am so ashamed. I ought to have told you of that doctor a fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it. Do you know, he is Sabina Mellot's dearest friend, and she begged me to recommend him to you, but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory, like everything else good. She has told me the most wonderful stories of his courage and goodness; and, conceive, she and her husband were taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going to be eaten, she says; but he helped them to escape in a canoe - such a story!—and lived with them for three months on a beautiful desert island; — it is all like a fairy tale. I'll tell it you when I come, darling, which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so happy. I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush, beside, who is very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about, but wonderfully tender about you. I fancy he must be in love; for he stood up the other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, Let her alone, my lady. She's not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she won't be the last; and I believe that some of the moves which look most foolish turn out best after all. Live and let live; everybody knows their own business best; anything is better than marriage without real affection.' Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little fellow turn sage in that way!

"By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him, for I have refused Lord Chalkclere after all. I told him (C. not S.) that he was much too good for me; far too perfect and complete a person; that I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he gave me a little trouble. Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever's novel !); and I told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in a thoroughbred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who would never go out of an amble. Lord Chalkclere may be very

finished, and learned, and excellent, and so forth; but, ma chère, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always re minds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalkclere would do very well to bind in Russia leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date but, really, even your Ulysses of a doctor, — provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and don't leave out his h's, would be more to the taste of your naughtiest of sisters."

CHAPTER XII.

A PEER IN TROUBLE.

SOMEWHERE in those days, so it seems, did Mr. Bowie call unto himself a cab at the barrack-gate, and, dressed in his best array, repair to the wilds of Brompton, and request to see either Claude or Mrs. Mellot.

Bowie is an ex-Scots-Fusileer, who, damaged by the kick of a horse, has acted as valet, first to Scoutbush's father, and next to Scoutbush himself. He is of a patronizing habit of mind, as befits a tolerably "leeterary" Scotsman of forty-five years of age, and six feet three in height, who has full confidence in the integrity of his own virtue, the infallibility of his own opinion, and the strength of his own right arm; for Bowie, though he has a rib or two "dinged in," is mighty still as Theseus' self; and both astonished his red-bearded compatriots, and won money for his master, by his prowess in the late feat of arms at Holland House.

Mr. Bowie is asked to walk into Sabina's boudoir (for Claude is out in the garden), to sit down, and deliver his message; which he does after a due military salute, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and in a solemn and sonorous voice.

"Well, madam, it's just this, that his lordship would be very glad to see ye and Mr. Mellot, for he 's vary ill indeed, and that's truth; and if he winna tell ye the cause, then I will- and it's just a' for love of this play-acting body here, and more 's the pity."

"More's the pity, indeed!"

"And it's my opeenion the puir laddie will just die if nobody sees to him; and I've taken the liberty of writing to Major Cawmill mysel', to beg him to come up and see to him, for it's a pity to see his lordship cast away, for want of an understanding body to advise him."

"So I am not an understanding body, Bowie?" "O, madam, ye 're young and bonny," says Bowie, in a tone in which admiration is not unmingled with pity.

"Young, indeed! Mr. Bowie, do you know that I'm almost as old as you?"

"Hoot, hut, hut-" says Bowie, looking at the wax-like complexion and bright hawk-eyes.

"Really I am. I'm past five-and-thirty this many a day." "Weel, then, madam, if you'll excuse me, ye're old enough to be wiser than to let his lordship be inveigled with any such play-acting."

"Really he's not inveigled," says Sabina, laughing. "It is all his own fault, and I have warned him how absurd and impossible it is. She has refused even to see him; and you know yourself he has not been near our house for these three weeks."

"Ah, madam, you'll excuse me; but that's the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you spin it."

"I assure you no. I can't let you into ladies' secrets; but there is no more chance of her listening to him than of me. And as for me, I have been trying all the spring to marry him to a young lady with eighty thousand pounds: so you can't complain of me."

"Eh? No. That's more like and fitting."

Well, now. Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr. Bowie; we do not look very villanous, do we?"

"Faith, 'deed then, and I suppose not," said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty. The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, "just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee china angels."

In half an hour they were in Scoutbush's rooms. They found the little man lying on his sofa, in his dressing-gown, looking pale and pitiable enough. He had been trying to read; for the table by him was covered with books: but either gunnery and mathematics had injured his eyes, or he had been crying; Sabina inclined to the latter opinion.

"This is very kind of you both; but I don't want you, Claude. I want Mrs. Mellot. You go to the window with Bowie."

Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed.

Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can't help looking up to you as a mother."