the Mediterranean, but in none for several years, and the worst fears of his family were well nigh realised, when a traveller in the east brought home a valuable pocket chronometer, a sextant, and a Dolland's telescope, which he had found attached to a human skeleton in a lonely glen in Syria. It was evident that these must have belonged to some European of the higher classes, and the misgivings of his family were converted almost into certainty, when the maker of the sextant declared, and proved by his books, that he had sold the instrument bearing the same number to Lord de Creci.

The Marquis had absolutely ordered mourning, when, on a foggy January evening in 1817, the family as it chanced being in town, a housemaid who had been enacting Thisbe with a neighbouring baker's apprentice, through the area railings in Grosvenor Square, suddenly broke from her Pyramus in an extacy of dismay, and electrified the basement floor and its inmates, by declaring that the ghost of Lord de Creci had just descended from a hackney coach at the door, and was paying his fare from the White Horse Cellar. Death on the pale horse could not have created more sensation, and the next minute a double rap from above seemed to confirm her statement in a voice of thunder. The most valiant footmen paused and hesitated; another peal announced that the Earl's ghost by no means intended to enter through the keyhole, as a commoner's or even a younger son's might be expected to do, the door must be answered, if Old Nick himself was knocking, and up they went, two men, who considered themselves in the light of what the French troops call 'enfans perdus,' in advance, two more to support, the groom of the chambers in reserve, and all the women of the establishment peeping up by the back stairs, to begin screeching when the proper time arrived. The lights burned not blue, they burned brown, for the oil was bad; the door was opened and the fog came in, but it did not smell of sulphur, and with it in walked Lord de Creci and the hackney coachman with his portmanteaus. His Lordship's identity was unquestionable, and he seemed to have no doubt of it himself, for he walked in as unconcernedly as if he had just come from attending a meeting at Exeter Hall, about the education of the people or the health of the poor, or some such unimportant matter, the only thing that appeared to artake of the supernatural in the whole scene, being that the coachman was content with his fare.

Lord Ellesmere could hardly recognize his son in the care-worn weather-beaten object that stood before him. Though only seven and twenty, a premature old age seemed to have fallen upon him, and his character, manners, and habits, had undergone a complete change. In his early youth, he had often given his father uneasiness, from a supposed want of steadiness in his character. Hasty, impetuous, generous, and full of warm and springing feelings, the great object of his life had been excitement, and a deep admiration of the beauty of truth, that has been impressed on our mind by the oratory and practice of Mr. Daniel O'Connell, compels us to declare, at the risk of ruining his character in the eyes of the country gentlemen, that in the field, he was thinking a great deal more of his fences than of how the hounds were working. Amicus equus, amicus canis, sed magis amica

veritas.' Partridge shooting he considered slow, pheasants were to him about as attractive as cold veal or its equivalent, but mile after mile of moor rolled away unheeded under his feet in pursuit of grouse, and he never appeared so thoroughly excited, as when he was exploring lonely woodland in search of woodcock.

He had more than once distinguished himself pugilistically in street combats, which seemed a prevailing epidemic among the young aristocracy of his day, corresponding to Britannia metal tournaments, going to balls in plate armour, assaulting policemen, becoming bankrupts, and the other similar recreations of the children of the nobility of the present time; and he might have possibly become a gambler, had he not, fortunately for him, been entrusted with the secret of an infallible system of winning at Rouge et noir, in the attempt to put .which in practice, he received a lesson that he never forgot for the rest of his life, having lost five thousand seven hundred pounds in one night, as is commonly the practical working of such systems, which look much better on paper than on cards.

All this was however changed. It cannot be said that he was morose, for all the better and kinder feelings of his nature remained unimpaired, but they were veiled by a gloomy reserve that none could penetrate. With respect to his travels and adventures he was silent, he allowed of no questions on those subjects, and whenever any one approached the forbidden ground, his sarcastic answers soon made the questioner feel that he had better leave him alone. With this he seemed to be content, for though possessing great powers of sarcasm, he never seemed inclined to give pain or to use them at all unless in self defence, and it was remarkable that, whilst whatever had happened to him appeared to have withered his heart into indifference about himself, he still retained a consideration for others, that whilst it prevented his peculiarities rendering him an object of dislike to his equals, attached his inferiors and dependants to him in a very high degree.

Lord de Creci's arrival at Avonmore Castle was an event that was the cause of no small sensation in the neighbourhood; he had often visited the country, but had on all those occasions come without notice, slept but one night in the Castle, and then run on to a shooting lodge the Marquis possessed about twenty miles off, where the woods were well known for the best cock-shooting in Ireland, and after a few days shooting disappeared as he came, taking care of the family interest by presents of cocks, to an extent that shewed that his gun was no joke in the woods, but rarely letting himself be visible. Now, however, he was coming down to receive company at Avonmore, and the influx of the neighbours was proportionate to the dignity, that is to say, to the rarity of the occasion, to his great horror; more especially as some of the elder ladies whom he might expect to encounter, whose memory had survived their discretion, thought it necessary to brush up the aforesaid memory and recall their recollection of his Lordship as a curly headed mischievous monkey about the time of the Union, and tell him that he was very much improved since that time, as well he might be, having had a quarter of a century and more to devote to that

laudable object. Others, who did not look upon time with such optimist eyes remarked that he was a good deal older. One old lady indulged in the pleasure of memory by instituting divers comparisons between him and certain cotemporaries, most of whom had by this time very bloated faces and very red noses; whilst another indulged in the pleasures of Hope, for she tried to persuade him to give her an account of his past life and adventures. She might just as well have tried to draw blood from a stone-but between them all they drove him half frantic in the first four and twenty hours, though a certain imperturbable self-command carried him safely through the day without materially damaging the Avonmore interest in the county; sometimes, it is true, an expression of weariness, a compression of the lip, a flashing of the eye, or even a sneer, would mark his annoyance at some peculiarly abominable piece of misplaced eivility or unwelcome recollection, but his words were courteous; he knew that all was well intended, and though he probably mentally consigned them to the place whither such intentions are supposed to go, he suffered them to find their own way, and every body said that his Lordship was very affable, and were exceedingly afraid of him nevertheless.

Henry's first introduction to this redoubted personage took place in Lord William's room, where he was sitting, whither the Earl immediately on his arrival at Avonmore proceeded, for rumour had magnified Lord William's accident, and what was called a spill' on the race course of Ballymacdaniel, had by the time it reached London, swelled to a disjointed version of broken collar bone, smashed ribs, with legs and arms to correspond. He found his brother a great deal better, indeed so near recovered that he merely kept his room to keep himself out of harm's way, for what is oinotechnically termed a 'wet week' had set in at Avonmore, that is to say, the party had been carefully composed of the mighty men of the days of old, who when they said that they did not like to attack their second magnum of claret without assistance, meant the assistance of a bottle of sherry.

Picked men they were after the fashion of the Scandinavian mythology (which they admired extremely for its posthumous jollifications) for they were literally chosen by the Valkyrs or choosers of the slain, seeing that the mode of life killed off all the weak ones before they were five and twenty, and the survivors seemed to bear charmed lives, not indeed exactly like the victim of Kehama, for their lives were not charmed from the weapons of strife,' inasmuch as some of them had given occasion for the customary coroner's verdict of the time and place in affairs of honour,-'We find that the deceased came by his death by a pistol bullet,'-though in other respects there was some analogy. They did not indeed carry a fire in their brain, but they carried something that looked very like a fire put in front of it, and the other lines

And water shall hear me,-
And know thee and fly thee,

applied to them strictly, and they took very good care that it should. It was the policy of Lord Ellesmere to collect these heroes of the bottle together-first, because it disposed of the whole lot in one lump; and

secondly, because it naturally suited these congenial souls to moisten their clay together, without let or hindrance from the intrusion of sober men; whose presence is an eyesore the moment objects begin to multiply and candles to dance. A large party had arrived the same morning as Lord de Creci, and his Lordship, though much discomfited thereby, had magnanimously resolved to be as agreeable as possible to them all, which he effected by breakfasting and spending the morning in his own room, riding by himself in the afternoon once that it did not rain, meeting his guests at 7 P.M. leaving the table before they commenced their orgies in earnest, and seeing no more of them that evening, for circumstances generally prevented their appearance in the drawing room. On the occasion Henry first encountered Lord de Creci, in Lord William's bed-room, the instant he saw him, it struck him that he had seen him, or at all events somebody like him before, though how, where or when, he could not recollect.

"What do you think of our wild West, Mr. Mowbray," said the Earl; "after your wild East, and its wild sports, all this must be somewhat tame; we have not even still hunting now to enliven your nights." "Tame perhaps they are," returned Henry, "for in most of the wild sports of the East, that I saw, the game was man.'

"And the reciprocity was not Irish," said the Earl.

"Not the least, we lost men in every sort of manner, sickness, want, exposure, fire, and sword; the brunt of every attack pretty well fell upon us, for the sepoys did not much like the looks of the Burmese, and we generally had to head the columns."

"You met Horton there, did you not?" said Lord William.

"Indeed I did, and I am under the greatest obligations to him; I was in his boat after I was wounded, and nothing could exceed his kindness to me I do believe I should have lost my leg, if not my life, if it had not been for him."

"Ha!" said the Earl, with a peculiar expression, "he is ratherodd !"

"We did not trouble our heads much about oddities there," said Harry; "a quick eye, a stout heart, and a ready hand, were the things most in requisition then, and all these he possessed."

"He is very odd," repeated the Earl, more as if he were speaking to himself, than addressing Harry.

"He certainly had one peculiarity that used to puzzle me, taken as it was in connection with his kindness to me, and that was," here he hesitated for a moment, "a singular pleasure in seeing mischief done, or people getting into scrapes.'

"Ha!" said the Earl, "he's gone to India now."

"De Creci," said Lord William, "that Slievenamore wood is as full of cocks as it can hold."

"That is fortunate," said his brother, "I hope the lodge is a little more habitable; the last time I was there the batterie de cuisine, consisted of a potatoe pot and a gridiron."

"Its all right now," returned Lord William.

"Are you inclined to try a day in the woods, Mr. Mowbray ?" asked the Earl,