(here he "unless

report first, that alarms and annoys; the shot afterwards-which explains nothing and soothes nobody: it kills. Try again, sir; try again. Unlessstarted up in terror, seeing his brother's face distorted by emotion)you have come to kill me! Hebby! Hebby! I am not so much in love with her! Calm your jealousy, for God's sake! She dropped the ribbon at the door, on my honour! And I-I am only a poor book, you know, and not like other men !"

John's excessive terror-he trembled, he wrung his hands, and whined-restored Herbert to calmness; but it could not repress a tear for both their sakes as he took his brother's hand, exclaiming

“Jack, be quiet! It is I who am being killed! You, my dear boy! I have come to you for advice and consolation. Sit down!"

“Oh," said Jack, shaking himself of his terrors like a dog of too much riverwater. "Then-then suppose you sit down, and explain yourself."

Herbert was rather struck with the suggestion as a sensible one. He asked himself, first, whether it was possible to remain there long without an explanation -without having somebody to talk to about his wretchedness and his wrongs. Clearly it would be very difficult. Then, what confidant better than a prisoner and a lunatic, who could not go about the world abusing his trust, and whose babbling in the house (if any) would be interpreted according to his infirmity. Again it was abundantly evident that random sparks of true light might be struck from John's mind, and that even some good, useful reason and insight might be made to flow from it, if tapped in the right mood. These considerations impelled Herbert to accept his brother's invitation, though he would himself have confessed that the chief motive power was a mere longing to disburthen his mind.

After some hesitation, then, he said

"Well, are you ready to listen, Jack?"

"Quite. But if I am to keep my head down on my shoulders, you had better not call me Jack any more. You fill it so full of marbles, and football, and birthdays, that it is just like a balloon with the gas escaping."

"All right, Jack, I will remember. And now I am going to begin. Once upon a time"

"Wait! Wait! Do you mean to tell your story in that barbarous way? Because, if you do, I positively cannot listen to it."

"In what barbarous way? 'Once upon a time's' all right, isn't it?"

"So it may be, Herbert; but perching on the corner of a table to say so isn't. The Easterns are the best story-tellers in the world, you will admit. Now they know better than you. They enter on the most ancient, the most universal, the most influential of all the forms of literature, and that one which is most human (a fig for mere cold brains, you know!), with becoming gravity. They sit crosslegged on a carpet, which is not a carpet to cover a carpenter's nails, but something to sit and think and dream on; and I have come to the conclusion that the tale of the Magic Carpet, in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment,' is intended to teach the superiority of this method of story-telling over all others. Now I have a carpet on purpose for these occasions. And pipes."

As he spoke, John brought from a closet a little square of genuine Eastern carpet, and a couple of chibouques, with tobacco, and the smallest of braziers. The first he spread in the centre of the room, and disposed the pipes and the

brazier in convenient situations. This done, he clapped his hands togetherpartly because it was an Eastern thing to do, and partly because it was the natural expression of a childish satisfaction.

"Come, Herbert !" he cried, seating himself in the Oriental manner, born of the age of tents and preserving its memory for ever, "now we shall do, I think." His brother, involved in the turmoil of his own reflections, seemed scarcely to notice these preparations, and sat down opposite the expectant, radiant John, as if by another will than his own. Meanwhile, John lighted a pipe, drew the smoke up the long stem of cherry-wood, screwed on the mouthpiece, and handed the soothing engine to his brother with an appropriate gesture. Then he prepared his own pipe; and there they sat smoking. It would have been difficult to tell at this moment (and for some time after, for that matter) which brother was the maddest, or the farthest out of the world.

"Young man!" said John at length, stroking his chin, and therewith an imaginary beard, "I am impatient to hear your story. Begin, I beseech you!" "Once upon a time," Herbert commenced in perfect good faith

("Horrible !" grumbled John. "Here is an incongruous Scandinavian telling nursery-tales on a Persian carpet!")

66 -there lived three persons in a house together. No-four !”

Five, were there not? The fifth being a young man named John, who studied with one Grippermore in an inner apartment.”

"True. They were a tolerably happy family-contented, though poor.-I don't get on very well in the Eastern way, John."

"At present your style lacks colour, certainly."

"Well, here you have it in plain English," cried Herbert, launching his story in a flood of animation almost wild, but eloquent too. Beginning with the timeonly a short year ago—when he had been moody, idle, irresolute, objectless—(“ like the stories we hear of the moon, unrefreshed by a drop of water, unblessed by a green leaf or anything that lives")-he went on to the day when his little Charlotte first interested him. His face aglow, his voice wonderfully changing at every turn in the story, he described with the fervid abandon of an improvisatore how he and all the world seemed to be born anew of his love. John's eager, dreamy gaze rather encouraged than disconcerted him, for it was like a child's. Then he told of their courtship, tenderly dwelling on the evening when they came to an explanation under the shadow of the park-wall, and some other little scenes touchingly foolish and true. And how at last came the question of marriage; and what Charlotte had said then (“with a foreboding heart-I see it now !"); and how he had prevailed over her; and the whole story of the marriage; and their apprehensions of a family row; and his endeavours in London to atone for the sin he had committed against the "Grovelly fetish," and his triumphant return, to find his wife banished and insulted-the victim of a conspiracy.

never

Told as Herbert narrated it, with fond minuteness, the story occupied a long hour, during all which time John listened with the profoundest attention, stirring except to trim his pipe anew, or his brother's. All around being so silent, when Herbert came to an end, it was as if a loud and passionate piece of music, played in the night, had ceased, and John looked as if he were trying to recall it all, and discover its subtlest meanings. Herbert himself, having finished, seemed almost as astonished at his own performance, as angry at his wrongs and grievous

for his woes. And there the two sat smoking in silence till the air that had sobbed and trembled with Herbert's narration had passed away out at the windows or up the chimney, and had been changed for new and cooler air. Then Herbert said"That's all, John. What do you think of it?"

"I think it very good, my dear Herbert. Some parts of it are almost fascinating. But it wants balance-it wants balance."

"By Heaven, it has nearly thrown me off mine! That you must see.”

"To be sure I do,” replied John, placidly watching the smoke that curled from his lips. “My remark is partly founded on that observation, and its cogency is proved by it."

"I am afraid you have not taken my story much to heart," replied Herbert, rising from the carpet.

“That's your fault," rejoined his brother, shifting himself into the middle of it. "You should have told me explicitly at the beginning where you did want me to take it. When there is not much of a man's attention, and it goes vagabondising all over his carcass like a drop of mercury, it is as well to fix it in a corner if he can; and as you said you had come to me for advice, I took your story all to head."

Herbert could not help thinking this a sensible course to adopt, if one has a head.

"But do you comprehend it, John ?" he asked.

“Do you?" retorted the other suddenly, looking something like the stoat we have read of, which, being carried up into the air by an eagle, fixed his teeth in the creature's throat, and drew its blood, and brought it to the ground dead; and, standing over the body on his hind-legs, crossed his fore-paws over his nose after the manner of stoats, and scudded away-grinning, no doubt.

The confusion and agitation that overcame Herbert at this pointed question sufficiently declared that it was a poser. There were several circumstances in the case which he did not comprehend.

"Of course you don't!" cried John, triumphantly waving his pipe-stem. "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio-as your name ought to have been, and mine Hamlet-than is to be accounted for by your philosophy."

"And what may yours account for ?" said Herbert, half expecting to hear some revelation.

"One thing at a time. At present, mine is engaged with the want of balance in your narrative, you know. You say it throws you off yours. My good Horatio, don't you see that is because your story wants balance? There is an element wanted to right it. Introduce that, and you have a pretty plot for a novel; otherwise, I advise you not to soil your paper; for you will only put your readers to the same confusion that you experience yourself."

"The fact is," rejoined the other with some impatience, "you mean that an explanation is necessary. That I know, and that I mean to have, by Heaven! I am here for the purpose!"

"Oh!" John laid down his pipe, and rose too, at this-proceeding leisurely to roll up the carpet as he continued, "Well, having every disposition to serve you, brother, I will overlook your barbarously rude way of putting it, and do my best for you. Now what I advise you to do is, to put another woman into the story!"

"Another

"Woman! A jealous woman, of course. Ah! you are quick enough now! You see at once the value of the suggestion. There's your balance for you! Come along! Let us have it all over again, with the jealous woman in it! It will be twice as long, twice as interesting, and three times as probable."

A

He was about to spread his carpet again, when his brother, pale with wonder and trembling with agitation, arrested him, exclaiming

"You seem clever at riddles, brother John !"

"Pretty well, brother Herbert. But we'll first go through with your story again, if you please."

"You know more of this affair than I do!"

""Twould seem so, wouldn't it? However, mine is a mere suggestion, and you are quite welcome to it, I am sure."

"I tell you what, Jack-this is insupportable affectation! What woman are you talking about?"

"Well," John replied with an injured look, and in a demonstrative attitude, "you know what Cocker says? Take one from two and one remains. If five persons live together in a country house, and only two are women, and you have taken one of them already, what are you to do? Take the other, obviously. Take Adelaide, and let us see how she works in."

Herbert's hand dropped from his brother's shoulder. "This is a new light indeed!" he muttered, turning away.

"Seating himself in a distant corner of the room, he turned this new light back upon the past year, and saw many things clearly for the first time. You, my dear

reader, know very well, that though Miss Dacre had on more than one occasion betrayed the worm that otherwise might have pined on her lily cheek (her cheek was not of the damask kind, you remember, but, lilies or roses, 'tis all the same to the worm)-though any young man but Herbert, or rather any young man less engrossed by another "object," could not have failed of discovering by a hundred pretty little signs and tokens that he was beloved by her-he had been all along totally blind to the fact. Now, however, he recognized the pretty signs and tokens as fast as he recalled them; and they struck him all the more forcibly because they

came all together, and he had been dull to them so long. I have only mentioned those occasions when Adelaide's preference came out most strongly-as in that scene in mamma's room after his interview with Lotty in the plantation (" He loves me,he loves me not!"); but once set travelling, Herbert's memory touched not only at these, but he found equivocal expressions and tender bits of demeanour strewed along the path as frequent as the white pebbles that guided back the little adventurer in the nursery-tale. Therefore it followed that after ten minutes' reflection the young man had no more doubt about Adelaide's affection for him than you have; and if love, why not jealousy? And if jealousy, why not treachery and violence? A man's mere vanity is almost enough to bring him to such conclusions, with our present information as to the Sex, but Herbert had certain other reminiscences of words, of glances, of illustrative points of character-which favoured them greatly.

So far from growing angry with the advance of these reflections, the farther he pursued them the more he was appeased. It was something to have lighted on the probable explanation of his mysteries and difficulties, not only for the satisfaction