Sir,—It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine;—it was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the end of the Number, and was as follows:—"Died at Bunderjumm, in the East Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was his heir,—a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks. He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition to my own—bought an estate, and an immense number of books—and cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted trees—I drained meadows—and wrote books. The trees grew—the meadows flourished—but the books never came to an end. Something always interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a Great Unpublished—in the same way as I understand there are a number of extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will bring better days to us both—types for me—actors for them.

At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly—not exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one—the drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the beginnings of books continually.

One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from any I had ever heard before—a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism and every thing else—homoeopathy and the water cure included; for it was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles—but so it was. The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull. The same mysterious effects—a sort of jump—a tremor as it were, not at all unpleasant, but very odd—so I went to the door myself; and there fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest eyes I ever saw—illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth—the brightest, glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She wore—for I may as well tell you it was a woman—she wore a flowing white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest shoes—at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before) "walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor—and calling me "Massa Sib."

"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she perhaps mistook me—I wore prodigious whiskers at that time—for a gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.

"No, no—no colonel," she said; "me wants you—me no care for colonels." What could she possibly want with me? I had never seen the woman before, or any body like her, except a picture of the Queen of Sheba when she was on a visit to Solomon. Could this woman come from Sheba? Could she take me for—no, no—she couldn't possibly take me for Solomon. So I was quite non-plussed.

"You no get no letter, Massa Sib, to tell you we was to come—eh?"

A letter? a letter?—I had had a hundred and fifty letters, but put them all into a box. How was it possible for me to read such a number? and who did she mean by us? How many more of then were coming?

"Massa Sib vill be so fond of him's babba—him vill"——

A dreadful thought came into my head—a conspiracy to extort money—a declaration at Bow Street—a weekly allowance. "Woman!" I said, "what, in heaven's name, do you mean by babba?"

"Dee little babb; it is so pretty—so like him papa."

"And whose baby is it? for I suppose it's a baby you mean, by your chatter about a babb."

"Your's. Oh! you will so lubb it."

"Mine? you detestable impostor, I never had such a thing in all my life."

"And here it is—oh, dee pretty dear!"

And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba—it is such a pretty dear!"

I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance—in doing which, nearly let the baby fall—I found my whole house taken possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they had lived with me twenty years.

I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe it knew as much of the proceeding as I did—and this it might very easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a policeman.

"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder room, and vill sleep vid dee babb—so nice!"

"Oh, you will—will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of Newcastle"—this was an allusion to her colour—"turned out into the street."

"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but him vill come to-day."

"Oh!"——

So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as Macready looks at the witches in Macbeth; for Mr Morgan was my legal adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business connected with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my correspondence.

In the mean time, the baby began to squall.

"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming, as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.

If I had been a man of a tragic turn of mind, and fond of giving vent to the passion of a scene, I would have walked up and down the room, striking myself on the brow or breast, and shouting, "Confusion! distraction!" and other powerful words which Mr Kean used to deliver with astonishing emphasis; but I had no talent for the intense, and threw myself on the sofa, exclaiming, "Here's a pretty go!"

And a pretty go it undoubtedly was—two black women and a saffron-coloured baby established with me, as if I had been married to a Hottentot; and my sister-in-law, as is very often the case, had come to attend to her nieces' morals and education.

"So! Mr Morgan, what is the meaning of all this?"

But before I had time for further exclamations, my friend Mr Morgan, who had come quietly into the room, interrupted me——

"Hush, my dear Sneezum—you are delighted, I'm sure. A most interesting incident—eh, Sneezum?"

"Oh! these things do all very well in a book," I began; "but, by jingo, sir, it's a very different thing in real life; and I tell you very fairly, I'd sooner be married at once than have all the troubles of bringing up a set of children that I have nothing to do with."

"Children! my dear Sneezum?"

"To be sure; how do I know that some more black women mayn't come—with some more children—till my house grows like a gallery of bronzed figures; but I'll sell them—see if I don't; I'll pack them all on an Italian boy's head-board, and sell them to the doctors—every one."

"You labour under a mistake, my dear Sneezum. You've got my letter?"

"Yes—I got it—but"——

"Oh, then, of course you are too happy to show such respect to the wishes of the defunct."

"What defunct?"

"Your uncle."

"What! uncle Sneezum?" and a wonderful light seemed to break in upon my mind.—"He sent this baby here?"

Mr Morgan nodded his head; and, being a man of great caution, he only put his finger in a mysterious manner alongside of his nose, and said—

"Secrets in all families, Sneezum."

"Oho! well—but the women—they're ugly customers, both of them; uncle Sneezum was no judge of beauty."

"The women! what do you mean?" said Mr Morgan.

"Ay, which of them is it? but you need hardly tell, for I should never know which of them you meant; they're a great deal liker each other than any two peas I ever saw. Are we to call her Mrs Sneezum?"

Here Mr Morgan burst into a great laugh.

"My dear Sneezum, you are always trying to find out some wonderful scene or other to put into one of your books. No, no—these are two nurses; one will remain in charge of the child, the other returns immediately to Calcutta."

"And where will the one that is to remain—where will she live?" I asked with a fearful presentiment of something shockingly unpleasant. But before he had time to answer, the black visage of the nurse herself appeared at the door, smiling with more blindingly white teeth than ever.

"We have took dee room below dis—dee babb is in dee beautiful bed, and ve vill never leave Massa Sib—never no more—so nice!"

So I was booked, and felt it useless to complain.

Chapter II.

Fifteen years passed on most happily. I established myself, or rather old Morgan established me, in my present house; he paid £25,000 for the estate; and I have gone on, as I told you at the beginning of this letter, cultivating my farm and my talents with the utmost care. The little girl grew and grew till I thought she would never stop; and by the time she was sixteen she was at least an inch taller than I was. Many people like those prodigious women of five feet six—I'm only five feet five myself, which I believe was the exact measurement of Napoleon; and I must confess that when I looked on Martha Brown—that was her name—a sort of compliment I always thought to the complexion of her Hindoo mother—I could not imagine how she could be the child of such a curious old-fashioned looking individual as I had heard my uncle Sneezum was. Well, she grew tall—and grew stout—and grew clever; and if old Morgan had been her father himself, he could not have taken more care of her. He was always down at Goslingbury, (that's the name of my place—I sometimes put "Park" after it; but the lawn is now in turnips, and not the least like Blenheim,) and his wife, and his two daughters, and his little boy—in fact, the whole family; and though, I confess, they were always most friendly and attentive to me, their principal cares were bestowed on Martha Brown. I never push myself where I perceive my company is not greatly desired; so I went out to see the planting, or thin the copses, or make new fences, or superintend the ploughing, or betook myself to my study, and gave full way to the wildest flights of fancy in my everlasting first chapters of a novel or romance.

Sir,—It was at that time—now nearly four years ago—that I began a work which I don't believe the most hostile criticism—but I will not boast; it will be enough to say that I consider it equal to any two introductory chapters I ever read. The whole of the first consists in a description of my own house—the name of course changed, and the locality removed to another county. I give the number of the rooms, the width of the passages, the height of ceilings, and a description of the new lifting-hinges to the dining-room door, that raise it over the turkey carpet, without sacrificing, as is usual, an inch of the lower part, and leaving a great interval at the sill. The fields are also very particularly described, and in some instances the exact measurement given; it gives such an appearance of reality, as may be seen in Ainsworth and others; and the second chapter is devoted, or meant to be devoted, to the living interests of the story—the dramatis personÆ, as it were—with hopes, fears, griefs, and the other passions alluded to in Collins's ode.

Mystery has an indescribable charm, which is the thing that makes me so fond of riddles; and so I determined to have a hero or a heroine, I did not care which, of a most unexampled kind. But how to invent an unexampled hero, I could not imagine. Some disgusting fellow had always done it before: even a blackamoor had been taken up—for there was that horrid Othello; a Jew—there was Sheva; a puppy—there was Pelham; a pickpocket—there was Jack Sheppard; and at last, as the sweet source of mystery, and the pleasantest one to unravel, I thought I would take myself. Yes, I would be the hero of my own book; and as to a heroine, why, one of the Misses Morgan, or Martha Brown, or old Mrs Morgan, or the Indian nurse, (whose name was Ayah, which is Sanscrit or Cherokee for her situation,) any body would do. I was not at all particular; so I began my own description.

It is amazing how little difference there is between man and man. A very few touches judiciously applied, would make Roebuck into Wellington, especially if Roebuck held the brush himself. Involuntarily I found my height increasing, my embonpoint diminishing, my eyes brightening, my hair disporting in wavy ringlets over a majestic brow, till at the end of the second page I was Theodore Fitzhedingham, twenty-five years of age, with several grandfathers and grandmothers distinguished in history before the Norman conquest, and a clear rent-roll of forty thousand a-year. And yet, after all, it was my own individual self, Thomas Smith Sneezum—not, perhaps, exactly as I was at that moment—but as I had often and often fancied myself when I had gone through a course of Thaddeus of Warsaws, and other chronicles of the brave and beautiful. For, I confess, I was no wiser than other people, and it is well known they have an amazing tendency to identify themselves with the characters of the books they read, which perhaps accounts for the contempt that Doctors' or Clergymen's wives in country villages entertain for any body of the name of Snookes; and gives them so prodigious an opinion of their own importance, that they wouldn't visit a stockbroker or flannel manufacturer for the world. But there I was, stuck in the third page of the second chapter—Theodore Fitzhedingham—blessed with all that handsomeness, and rolling in all that money, and not able to move hand or foot, or in short make the least progress towards the dÉnouement of the story. For, with all my study, I could not manufacture a heroine out of any of the girls around me. Miss Letitia Morgan had false teeth—I found it quite impossible to make a heroine of her; and besides, I was not even sure of the genuineness of the long curls at the side of her face. For, you will observe, that the beautifying process I have mentioned above; seems strictly confined to one's own particular case. No lying and swopping, and altering and amending, would make those long brown artificial incisors—you saw a roll of the gold wire every time she laughed—into a row of pearls encased in a casket of ruby. That is my description of white teeth in red lips, and I think it is far from bad. Then Miss Sophia was immensely tall, and immensely thin; and in the mornings when she appeared en negligÉe, as they say in the Morning Post, her clothes hung straight down in perpendicular descent, so that she looked exactly like the canvass air funnels that you see in a steam-boat: and there were no outs and ins, or ups and downs, about her figure from top to toe; and I found it impossible, for a particular reason, to supply these deficiencies by the exercise of my ingenuity in description And that particular reason was this,—that she did it herself. Lord! what a change took place on Miss Sophia as you saw her gliding about the room like a half emptied pillow-case in the morning, and the grand and distinguÉe (Morning Post again) individual that choked up all the doorways, and occupied whole sofas, when you met her at a party at night. Then there were such flounces and tucks, and furbelows,—she sailed through the room enveloped in such awful circumgyrations of muslin—so pulled in at the waist, and so inflated every where else, that she looked—as you saw only her neck and shoulders emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was buried—like an intrepid Æronaut who has fallen by some accident through a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the vera superficies. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a heroine from seven or eight spring gauze petticoats, and a roll of millinery below the waist, that looked like a military cloak rolled up on the crupper of a life-guardsman's saddle. Then poor Martha Brown was too young, and at that time too bashful, for a heroine; and besides, there was no getting over the blot on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with my hand-axe a birch tree to be felled, a thought came into my head. I left the cross half executed, and threw the axe on the bank, hurried home, and locked myself in the study. Pen and paper were lying before me, and in a moment I had got deep into the introduction of my heroine. She was an orphan thrown on Fitzhedingham's care—young, beautiful, accomplished, but of unknown mysterious parentage—and the dÉnouement to consist in the discovery that her father was——but I won't mention it just now, for half the value of these things consists in the surprise. I will give you a page or two of it, only begging you to remark how entirely a man's style alters when he gets into a serious work. Here I go gabbling on and on to you, without much regard to style, or perhaps to grammar—(if there are any slips in it, have the kindness to correct them before you show this to any one)—but the instant I take up my pen to write a portion of my novel, I get dignified and heroic, perhaps you will say a little stiff, but I assure you I have formed myself on the best models. The passage I alluded to was this:—

"To all the graces of external beauty Maria Valentine de Courcy united all the captivations of the intellect—all the attractions of the understanding,—all the enchantments of the soul. Cast in the finest mould of earthly loveliness—radiant in all the charms of youth, of innocence, and of integrity—she was the loved of all approachers—the idol of all observers—the appropriator of all affections. A little more ethereal, she would have been a goddess—a little less celestial, she would have been a more ordinary woman than she was. For her nature was of too lofty a kind—her spirit of too sublimated a character—her disposition of too beatified a placidity, to allow her to be classed with the other individuals constituting the female sex. A period of many years had elapsed since she first took up her residence among the proud halls—the baronial corridors—the heraldic passages of Fitzhedingham Castle. Winter had found her wandering in the snowy lanes—Spring had noticed her careering in the budding meadows—Summer had beheld her perambulating through the flowery grove—and Autumn had kept his eye on her as she galloped her managed palfrey through the umbrageous orchard, or skimmed in her light bark over the pellucid bosom of the silver lake. For many years such had been her unvarying course; and if loveliness has a charm—if innocence has an attraction—if youth has a witchery—all—all—were concentrated in the noble figure and exquisitely-chiselled countenance of the subject of our sketch. The colouring of a Titian, the elasticity of a Rubens, the magnificence of a Michael Angelo Buonaparte."—

"Sneezum, Sneezum!" cried old Morgan, kicking with all his might at the study-door; and interrupting me before I could exactly settle how the sentence was to be properly ended—"Come and bid poor Billy good-bye."

"Billy? who's Billy?" I thought—a little perplexed, perhaps, with the labours of composition.

"Come; he's off this minute for Dublin, where he joins the Trigonometrical Survey—a great honour for a fellow not six months in the Engineers."

The old fool was talking about his son William Morgan, who had been at Goslingbury (Park, when I get the turnips up and the grass sown) for a month—a nice merry young man; and so clever at mathematics, and hydraulics, and other scientific pursuits, that he had won all the prizes at Addiscombe; and, though only a second lieutenant, was chosen to conduct a great survey of Ireland.

"I'm coming," I said; and bundled away my description of Maria Valentine de Courcy; and away old Morgan and I went to the lawn, where we expected to find the soldier. But no soldier, nor any body else, was to be seen.

"His mother and sisters are making fools of themselves, I daresay," said I, "blubbering and crying over the boy, as if he was going out to settle in New Zealand."

"I suspect there's a good deal of crying going on," replied old Morgan; "let us look into the summer-house at the top of the garden." So we hurried up the grass walk; and just as we got to the door, I was in the very act of stepping into the bower, and old Morgan close on my heels, when a man, with a handkerchief held to his eyes, rushed distractedly upon us, and rolled us both down the steps, as if we had been pushed by a bull; and in a minute or so, when I came to myself; I found my heels in a gooseberry bush, and my head tight-jammed into a flower-pot; old Morgan had rolled over into the next bed, which was prepared for celery, and he lay in one of the long troughs, with his hands folded across his breast, and evidently persuaded that he was his own effigy on the top of his own tomb. And this was all the leave-taking we had with the engineer; for, in an agony of grief at parting from his mother, and perhaps to hide his crying, he had hurried out blindfolded, and took no more notice of his host and his father than if we had been a couple of old cabbage-stalks. However, I got up as soon as I was able, and assisted Morgan once more upon his feet. This time we proceeded more cautiously into the summer-house; and on the bench we saw Martha Brown sitting and sobbing with all her might, with her head on Mrs Morgan's shoulder, and Miss Sophia holding a bottle of salts to her nose; while a tear, every now and then, rolled slowly over the tip of her own; and Miss Letitia chafing the sufferer's hands, and occasionally giving them a thump, as if to guard against a fit of hysterics.

Those Hindoos are certainly beautifully made. I never saw any thing more graceful than the recumbent figure of Martha Brown; and I think that was the first time I remarked that she was no longer a child. Up to that moment I had scarcely observed her size; but there she was—a regular full-grown woman—though, I must say, she was behaving rather like an infant, to keep whimpering and sobbing in such a ridiculous way, merely because I had fallen down-stairs.

"What is all this?" I said; "has any body hurt the child?"

"No, no, Mr Sneezum!" exclaimed Mrs Morgan, without looking at me; "leave her alone for a minute or two; it will soon be over."

"How do feel, dear?" enquired Miss Letitia.

"Are you any better, love?" asked Miss Sophia.

And it was very evident they gave themselves no concern about the nearly fatal accident we had met with, which had affected poor Martha so deeply; so I became a little warm.

"Very pretty—very pretty this—upon my word! What in heaven's name is the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William, pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that would care a farthing if we had both been killed."

Upon this the girl made a great effort, and lifted up her head; but the moment her eyes rested on me she gave a great scream—wild laughter mixed with the most dreadful sobs; and she was fairly off in an hysterical attack.

"Why, she's worse than she was," I said; but old Morgan took me aside.

"Don't you see," he said, "that she's of a most affectionate, gentle nature, and that William's rushing off in the way he did"—

"Ay, to be sure, and upsetting me in such a dangerous manner. Poor thing! is it all for my sake do you think she's crying?" So I went and took her hand, and said—"Don't cry, Martha, don't cry—I'm not a bit hurt—so be a good girl, and don't vex yourself any more."

Upon this, Mrs Morgan looked at me as if she thought me deranged—so did Miss Letitia—and so did Miss Sophia; and even Martha, when she looked at me again, fell back in fresh fit, holloing "His head! his head"—and this time it was more laughter than sobs.

"Come away—come away," said old Morgan at last; "no wonder you frighten them all to death. What the deuce is that you've got on your head?"

And there stood I with my brows enveloped by the flower-pot.

Chapter III.

I saw the Morgans were making a dead set to take me in. Sometimes it was Miss Letitia, and sometimes Miss Sophia—and always the mother. To hear that woman talk of her daughters, you would swear that two such were never known on earth before. Their sweetness—their temper—their beauty—the numbers of people that were in love with them—the hosts of rich and handsome fellows they had rejected, and the decided turn both of them had for a quiet country life, and the society of a well-educated, intellectual man of a certain age. She was a wonderful woman Mrs Morgan, and I really believe she thought she was speaking the simple truth all the time. But it wouldn't do—I judged for myself, and never took the least notice of all her hints and boastings. I tried to have them less about the house than they used to be; but nothing would keep them away—they always pretended it was for the sake of Martha Brown—a very likely story that they should trouble their heads about my uncle's anonymous contribution to the population returns, when his veritable nephew and heir was to be had by hook or crook. But I don't mean any disparagement by that to the poor little girl herself—far from it—she was the nicest creature in the world, and really not so black as I had thought; and she was now nearly twenty-one, and played and sung—and such an excellent critic, too! I always read my writings to her the moment they were finished, and she never found the slightest fault in any of them. I had left my description of Maria Valentine de Courcy incompleted for several years—for it is a long time now since the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin—and I now determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult her on the farther conduct of the story.

"Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what I've written."

So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square, and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention.

"It is the rest of the second chapter."

"Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of the story."

To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come to the end of the story?

"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.

"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near the dÉnouement yet. There must be a duel, of course—a misunderstanding—and a rival."

"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.

"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"

"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't—for hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"

"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl; and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"—

"Sneezum! Sneezum!"

There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.

"What the mischief do you want?"

"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a welcome to poor Billy?"

"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"

But there sat Martha—sometimes red and sometimes white—with tears in her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.

"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."

She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.

"A pretty fellow this son of yours—never one word of apology, either to me or Martha—I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening affectionate little girls with his violence."

"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least alarm to his sisters in his life."

"Perhaps not—perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another girl that I wouldn't have any injury done to on any account. In fact, I may as well tell you at once, that Martha evidently expects me to provide for her happiness, and I am going to do it."

"Well, nothing can be fairer—but how?"

"Why, as to any little blot on her birth, I don't care much about it. Uncle was a kind friend to me, and I really think I can't do better than give a good steady husband to his child."

"Bravo! bravo! when you have found her."

"What do you mean by—when I have found her?"

"Why, have you never read the letters?"

"No; I never read letters. They're all in the wooden box."

"Then where, when, or how, have you encountered a daughter of your uncle?"

"Why, Martha Brown. I tell you I don't dislike a little dash of Hindoo blood; it's like curry, and gives a flavour."

"And who is the husband you have chosen for her?"

"Myself."

Old Morgan burst into a prodigious laugh, but I was in no humour to stand such nonsense. I got into a furious passion—he answered in an insulting manner—and so I ordered him to get out of my house, him and his son, and all his baggage.

"Certainly, certainly, Mr Sneezum, but you'll repent of it; and, as to your marrying Martha, you'll just as soon marry the Princess-Royal."

When he was gone, I went in search of Martha to settle the matter at once. There was a circular basin among the shrubs upon the lawn, with a nymph cowering under a waterfall that fell all round her like a veil—a very pretty ornament to the grounds—and at one side of it was a little arbour, where I used often to sit and see the sun make rainbows out of the spray that rose round the head of the nymph. To get to it, it was necessary to walk on the ledge of the wall that rose a little above the water in the basin, and this I was induced to do; for, as I was searching for Martha, I thought I heard a voice in the arbour, and I hurried on to tell her what I had done to old Morgan. I stept steadily on tiptoe along the coping-stone—for I wished to surprise her—but on getting to the opening of the arbour, a sight met my eyes that made me lose my balance all of a sudden; and with a start of rage and indignation, I stept backward into the pond, and was forced to battle among the water-lilies for my life. Martha rushed from the arbour and held out her hands in vain; but the person with her—a tall young man, with bushy whiskers and an enormous pair of mustaches—leapt into the basin and lifted me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top, and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.

"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"

"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"

"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."

"Why, it's William Morgan—how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"

"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our stable-door."

"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."

"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."

I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet. Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions. After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel, leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.

One morning—it was last Wednesday—I went into the study, and had just taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room windows. I went out to the barn—all the men were there. I gave orders to them to warn the intruders off; if they resisted, to knock them down without ceremony and keep them in custody till I could get them before a magistrate. Having satisfied my mind on these points, I felt so sure of my object being gained in both respects—that is, Martha and the railway—that I dispatched my letter to old Morgan, inviting the whole family to dine with me on Friday, the day I had fixed on for the marriage. Martha sat by my side in the study, and went on with the everlasting Ottoman square. I read to her—

"'Is it in the circle of possible events—is it a contingency to be calculated on in the decrees of fate,' exclaimed Theodore Fitzhedingham—(this was the finest bit out of my last chapter)—'that the girl I have loved—the paragon I have worshipped—the angel I have adored, is, indeed no longer the humbly born maid I thought her but the descendant of princes—the kinswoman of emperors—the inheritrix of kings?'

"'It certainly is far from false, nay, it is absolutely true,' returned Maria Valentine de Courcy, with a condescending smile, 'that I am not the person you have taken me for, but oh! beloved Theodore—faithful Fitzhedingham, need I tell you that my love is unaltered, my affections are unabated, my heart unchanged'"——

"Sir! sir!" cried voice at the door, "they be come." I hurried out; my servant was armed with the poker, I seized the hall tongs as I passed through; and on the lawn, in the coolest possible manner, were about half a dozen fellows smoking their cigars, and occasionally looking through a bright brass instrument upon a three-legged stand, and noting down the result with the greatest nonchalance.

"Oho!" I cried, and rushed at the intruders, "run for the people in the barn, Thomas. Who are you, you infernal interloping vagabonds?"

"Engineers of the Episcopal and Universal Railway Company, sir, and we will trouble you to stand out of the way," said a tall blackguard, scarcely deigning to look at me.

"Oh, you are, are you? Just wait a minute till my men come up, and I'll have you and your railway ducked in the horsepond."

"Don't interrupt us, old man," replied the scientific ruffian; "if we do any damage, charge it to the Company—we have seventy-five thousand shares, and can afford to pay any claims."

"Here!" I cried to the men, "catch that long villain with the dwarf telescope and take him into the house; if I don't get him six weeks of the treadmill my name is not Tom Sneezum."

The man made a stout resistance, but at last was overpowered, and carried into the hall. I helped to repel the others, and as they were tolerably civil, now that the ringleader was gone, I contented myself with walking them to the very end of my boundaries, and gave them notice, that if they ventured to return, I would treat them exactly as I had done their chief. This whole business did not take up more than an hour; and before going home, I walked across to Major Slowtops, the nearest magistrate, and luckily found him at home. He promised to trounce the fellow handsomely when I brought him; and telling him I would be back with the culprit and the witnesses in half an hour, I returned in no little triumph to Goslingbury.

"Where is the vagabond?" I exclaimed, when I got into the house.

"He's been gone this hour, sir," said Thomas, hardly able to keep in a laugh.

"Gone! who let him go?"

"Why, he ordered the carriage, sir, and him and Miss Martha is off for London."

"Are you mad, Thomas?—what is it you're speaking of? Where is the rascally leveller of the railway?"

"Lor', sir—don't you know? It was only Mr William at one of his tricks. The moment he took off the spectacles we all knew him, and Miss Martha seemed so pleased"—

"Did she?"

"Oh, yes! and Mr William—but they say he's Captain Morgan now—laughed so. It was certainly a rare good surprise—wasn't it, sir?"

I rushed into my study. "Let her go!" I said, "the false, deceitful Hottentot, or Hindoo, or whatever she is; she's as black as my hat, and a disgrace to my old uncle." So I stood very quietly, brooding over my misfortune—if a misfortune it was—and revenging myself by tearing into a million pieces the beginning and the end of my romantic novel.

"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour; for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for to-day."

"What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?"

"Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an hour or two on their way to the North."

"I think, sir, as her guardian—not to say her cousin"——

"There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat, and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you are."

"That makes it worse, sir."

"Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody will be a bit the wiser."

I thought old Morgan advised very wisely—so, if you show this to any body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the world.—Believe me, sir, your obedient servant,

T. S. S.