deaux, our hero purchased a small fishing-boat, laid in a stock of provisions, hired a sailor or steersman, and passed down the river in the jacket, boots, and chapeau of a French fisherman. On the evening of the second day they were in the estuary of the river, and before them rolled the Bay of Biscay, looking as fierce and open-mouthed as a shark. "The critter"-as Long Tom Coffin said of the harpooned whale"was in its flurry." But, notwithstanding its swell and flurry,— perhaps fury' would be the better term, our hero told the steersman to "sail out."

"Where out, sir?" inquired the helmsman, in surprise.

"Out to sea-into the bay."

"It would be madness, sir; it would be destruction. This boat could never live in such a sea.”

"Did you ever try?"

"Never, sir."

"Then you can know nothing about it. Sail out, I tell you; or I shall take the rudder from your hands."

The sailor was stubborn, and, when coerced, attempted to make a signal to a French guard-ship which lay in the mouth of the river. Our lieutenant, seeing this, drew out a pistol, placed it at his head, and threatened to blow his brains out if he moved a finger or gave any alarm. Being in this way perfectly cowed by the resolute conduct of his employer, he implicitly followed his directions. But some boatmen on the beach, suspecting that all was not right, pushed out two boats and gave chase. The wind, which was fresh and from the southeast, was in favour of our hero's little craft, which carried her canvas with ease, and rose on the bosom of the swelling billows like a cork. In the course of two or three hours the pursuing boats were "nowhere." At daybreak the next morning our hero found himself within hail of the British fleet lying at anchor in the Basque Roads. The sailors, when made acquainted with our lieutenant's history, received him with hearty cheers, the officers and admiral with open arms.

Here terminates the history of our hero's remarkable escapes. At Waterloo he was hit with a round shot, which carried off one of his legs. He lived till the next morning, but died of the hæmorrhage, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

Broken to Harness.

A STORY OF ENGLISH DOMESTIC LIFE.

BY EDMUND YATES.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MR. BERESFORD IN PURSUIT.

THE idea suggested by Simnel, after the interview with Dr. Prater at the Flybynights, came upon Mr. Beresford with extraordinary force. It opened up to him a new train of thought, gave a complete turn to his intended course of life, afforded him matter for the deepest study and reflection. As we have already seen, he was a man with a faultless digestion, and without a scrap of heart,-two qualities which had undoubted greatly conduced towards his success in life, and towards making him a careless, easy-going, worldly philosopher. When he first saw Miss Townshend at Bissett Grange, he remembered her as a cheery little flirt whom he had met during the previous season; and finding her companionable and amusing, determined to carry on a flirtation which should serve as a pastime, and, at the break-up of the party, be consigned to that limbo already replete with similar amourettes. The presence of Captain Lyster, and the unmistakable evidence of his passion for the young lady, gave Mr. Beresford very little annoyance; he had a notion that, save in very exceptional cases, of which indeed he had had no experience, women had a horror of an earnest lover; that watchings and waitings, hangings on words, deep gazings into eyes, and all outward signs of that passion which induces melancholy and affords themes for poets, were as much rococo and out of date, as carrying a lady's glove in your hat and perpetually seeking a fight with some one on her account. He thought that women hated “dreary" lovers, and were far more likely to be won by rattle, laughter, and raillery than by the deepest devotion of a silent and sighing order. Moreover, as he was only going in for flirtation, he would make his running while it lasted, and leave the captain to come in with the weightcarrying proprieties after he had gone.

So far at first. Then came the recollection of his straightened position, the reflection that Miss Townshend was an heiress, and the determination to go in seriously for a proposal-a determination which was very short-lived, owing to the discovery of the lady's engagement to Gustav Schröder. From the time of her marriage, Mrs. Schröder was by Beresford mentally relegated to a corps which included several married ladies of his acquaintance; for the most part young and pretty women, whose husbands were either elderly, or immersed in business, or, what was equally available, immersed in pleasure, and more attentive to other men's wives than to their own; ladies who required "notice," as they phrased

it, and who were sufficiently good-looking to command it from some men, between whom and themselves there existed a certain understanding. Nothing criminal nor approaching to criminality; for despite the revelations of the Divorce Court, there is, I take it, a something, whether it be in what is called our phlegmatic temperament, whether it be in the bringing-up of our English girls,-bringing-up of domesticity utterly unknown to Continental-bred young ladies, and which hallows and keeps constantly present the image of the doting father and the tender mother, and all the sacred home-associations,-a something which strengthens the weak and arrests the hand of the spoiler, and leaves the sacrifice incomplete. The necessity for "notice," or for "being understood," or for "having some one to rely on" (the husband engaged in business or in the House being, of course, utterly untrustworthy), has created a kind of society which I can only describe as a kind of solid bread-and-butter demi-monde-a demi-monde which, as compared with that state of existence known in France under the title, is as a club to a tavern, where the same things are carried on, but in a far more genteel and decorous manner. The relations of its different members to each other are as free from Wertherian sentimentalism as they are from Parisian license, and would probably be considered severely correct by that circle of upper Bohemians, of whose lives the younger Dumas has constituted himself the chronicler.

Having, then, mentally appointed Mrs. Schröder a member of this society, Mr. Beresford took upon himself the office of her cavalier, and behaved to her in due form. When they were in company together, he sedulously kept his eyes upon her, strove to anticipate her wishes, and let her see that it was she who entirely absorbed him; he always dropped his voice when he spoke to her, even though it were about the merest trifle; and he invariably took notice of the arrangements of her dress, hair, and appearance in general, and made suggestions which, being in excellent taste, were generally approved and carried out. Then he found out Mrs. Schröder's romantic side, a little bit of nineteenth-century sentiment, dashed with drawing-room cynicism, which found its exponent in Mr. Owen Meredith's weaker verses; and there they found plenty of quotations about not being understood, and the "little look across the crowd," and "what is not, might have been," and other choice little sentiments, which did not tend to elevate Mr. Gustav Schröder, then hard at work in the City, in his wife's good opinion. Indeed, being a very weak little woman, with a parasitical tendency to cling for support to something, and being without that something, which she had hitherto found in Barbara, free from the dread which her father's presence always imposed upon her, and having no companion in her husband, Mrs. Schröder began to look forward with more and more eagerness to her opportunities of meeting Charles Beresford, to take greater and greater delight in his attentions and his conversation, and to substitute a growing repugnance for her hitherto passive

endurance of Mr. Schröder. Charles Beresford was gradually coming to occupy the principal position in her thoughts, and this that gentleman perceived with mingled feelings of gratified vanity and annoyance. "She's going a little too fast!" he had said to himself; "this sort of thing is all very well; but she's making it a mile too palpable! People will talk, and I'm not in a position to stand any public scandal; and as for bolting, or any thing of that sort, by Jove, it would be sheer ruin and nothing less." In this frame of mind, it had more than once occurred to Mr. Beresford to speak to Mrs. Schröder, and caution her as to her bearing towards him; but fortunately for him, so thoroughly void of offence had been all their relations hitherto, that he scarcely dared to hint at what he intended to convey, without risking the accusation of imputing evil by his very advice. And in the mean time, while he hesitated what course to take, came Dr. Prater's information, which at once changed all his plans.

The day after the conversation at the Flybynights, Mr. Beresford left town and remained away for a week. The first day after his return, he went into Mr. Simnel's room at the Office, and found that gentleman as usual surrounded with work. Contrary, however, to his general custom, Simnel no sooner looked up and saw Beresford than he threw down the pen which he was plying, rose, and advancing shook his friend heartily by the hand.

"Glad to see you back, Charley !" he said; "I was afraid you were off for a ramble by your leaving no message and no address. Some of the old games, eh? You must give them up now, Master Charley, and live circumspectly; by Jove, you must."

"Nothing of the sort," replied Beresford. "Gayford, who was chief here before Maddox, was an old friend of our family; and he's ill, poor old boy, so I went out of charity to stay with him. He's got a place at Berkhampstead, and there's deuced good hunting-country round there. I had three capital days; Gayford's daughters were out; clipping riders, those girls! good as Kate Mellon any day!"

"Indeed!" said Mr. Simnel, wincing a little at the name: "I should think flirting with any body's daughters, be they ever so 'clipping,' as you call it, would be time wasted for you just now, wouldn't it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Beresford, knowing perfectly, but anxious that the declaration should come from his companion.

"Mean!" said Simnel, somewhat savagely. "What am I likely to mean? That you ought to stick to your duties here and earn your salary; that Sir Hickory has heard that you go to the Argyle Rooms, and is going to speak to Lord Palmerston about it; that you're hurting your health or spoiling your complexion by keeping late hours,-is that why I'm likely to tell you to live circumspectly? What rubbish it is fencing with me in this way! You know that the last time we met was at that night-club of yours; that we had a talk there with Dr. Prater; and that you determined-"

"I know," interrupted Beresford with a start-"I know," he continued, looking round, "I'm not over particular; but I confess this plotting for a dead man's shoes seems to me infernal rascality."

"What do you mean by plotting,' Charles Beresford? I am plotting for no dead man's shoes. I have no hope of marrying a pretty widow, and having a splendid income; and as for rascality-"

"There, I didn't mean it; I only thought-"

"Nor, on the other hand," pursued Mr. Simnel relentlessly, "am I over head and ears in debt, pressed by Jews, horribly impecunious, and-"

“Leave me alone, Simnel, can't you? I know all this; and as you must be perfectly certain, I've turned this Schröder affair over in my mind a hundred times already."

"And what have you decided?"

"To go in for it at all hazards.”

"I think you're right," said Simnel quietly; "it seems to me your last chance; and though it's not strictly a very nice business, there are hundreds of men holding their heads up before the world, which very much esteems them, who have made their money in far worse transactions. You'll require an immense amount of patience and tact."

"The former undoubtedly. Prater said he might go at any moment if-what was it?-any thing excited or annoyed him. Question is what does excite a fellow of that sort-Muscovadoes being high, or grayshirtings scarce, or pig-iron in demand, or some of those things one sees in the paper-banks breaking or stocks falling, eh? As for the tact, I don't think that will be required now.”

"How do you mean—now?”

"Because it's all squared already," said Beresford complacently. "I've only to go in and win whenever I like, I imagine. To tell truth -though a man doesn't talk of these things, of course-I've been fighting shy of it lately, rather than pressing it on."

"Yes, yes, of course," said Simnel impatiently; "I know all about that; but don't you see that the greatest tact will be required because your plan of operations must be entirely changed? You have been carrying on a very animated flirtation within certain limits; but now you are going in for a totally different thing. You are going in-sit down, and let us talk this over quietly, it's rather important; I know you've great experience in such matters; but just listen to my humble advice, it may be worth hearing,-you are going in to make sure of marrying a woman after her husband's death; an event likely to occur at any time. To insure success there are two ways-one by compromising her "

"By Jove, Simnel!" exclaimed Beresford through his shut teeth.

"Be quiet, and don't interrupt-I'm not going to brush the down off your virtue! As I said, by compromising her, by which you gain a hold upon her which she cannot shake off, and must always acknowledge