in the linen-press in the green lumber-room at the top of the house, and the key of the green lumber- room is in a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe in the Star-Chamber, and the --’

‘Ah, well; never mind,’ grunted Jack, interrupting the labyrinth of lies. ‘I dare say these will do -- I dare say these will do,’ putting them on; adding, ‘Now, if you’ll lend me a shawl for my neck, and a Macintosh, my name shall be Walker.’

‘Better make it Trotter,’ replied his lordship, ‘considering the distance you have to go.’

‘Good,’ said Jack, mounting and driving away.

‘It will be a blessing if we get there,’ observed Jack to the liveried stable-lad, as the old bag of bones of a mare went hitching and limping away.

‘Oh, she can go when she’s warm,’ replied the lad, taking her across the ears with the point of the whip. The wheels followed merrily over the sound, hard road through the park, and the gentle though almost imperceptible fall of the ground giving an impetus to the vehicle, they bowled away as if they had four of the soundest, freshest legs in the world before them, instead of nothing but a belly-band between them and eternity.

When, however, they cleared the noble lodge and got upon the unscraped mud of the Deepdebt turnpike, the pace soon slackened, and, instead of the gig running away with the old mare, she was fairly brought to her collar. Being a game one, however, she struggled on with a trot, till at length, turning up the deeply- spurlinged clayey-bottomed crossroad between Rookgate and Clamley, it was all she could do to drag the gig through the holding mire. Bump, bump, jolt, jolt, creak, creak, went the vehicle, Jack now diving his elbow into the lad’s ribs, the lad now diving his into Jack’s; both now threatening to go over on the same side, and again both nearly chucked on to the old mare’s quarters. A sharp, cutting sleet, driving pins and needles directly in their faces, further disconcerted our travellers. Jack felt acutely for his new eight-and-sixpenny hat, it being the only article of dress he had on of his own.

Long and tedious as was the road, weak and jaded as was the mare, and long as Jack stopped at Starfield, he yet reached Jawleyford Court before the messenger Harry.

As our friend Jawleyford was stamping about his study anathematising a letter he had received from the solicitor to the directors of the Doembrown and Sinkall Railway, informing him that they were going to indulge in the winding-up act, he chanced to look out of his window just as the contracted limits of a winter’s day were drawing the first folds of night’s muslin curtain over the landscape, when he espied a gig drawn by a white horse, with a dot-and-go-one sort of action, hopping its way up the slumpey avenue.

‘That’s Buggins the bailiff,’ exclaimed he to himself, as the recollection of an unanswered lawyer’s letter flashed across his mind; and he was just darting off to the bell to warn Spigot not to admit anyone, when the lad’s cockade standing in relief against the skyline, caused him to pause and gaze again at the unwonted apparition.

‘Who the deuce can it be?’ asked he of himself, looking at his watch, and seeing it was a quarter past four. ‘It surely can’t be my lord, or that Jack Spraggon coming after all?’ added he, drawing out a telescope and opening a lancet-window.

‘Spraggon as I live!’ exclaimed he as he caught Jack’s harsh, spectacled features, and saw him titivating his hair and arranging his collar and stock as he approached.

‘Well, that beats everything!’ exclaimed Jawleyford, burning with rage, as he fastened the window again.