Whether Mr. Miranda were a fatalist, and therefore thought it useless to endeavour to evade his doom, or whether he despised the warning he had received, cannot exactly be ascertained; but this much is known, that he had his trunks carried to the office of the Castlemaine stage, at the same time securing and paying for his place. The porters, however, must have brought him wrong information as to the hour at which the coach set out, for when Mr. Miranda arrived at the office, he found, to his great disappointment, that the mail was gone, and, as he had not 'made his appearance, his baggage was left behind. Whatever vexation Mr. Miranda felt, he did not lose his temper, but civilly requested that his trunks might remain at the office until he could find some other conveyance, and the stage-coach proprietors, who had profited by the forfeiture of Mr. Miranda's fare, could not refuse his modest desire.

This occurrence took place on the 30th of January, 1858, but, to judge by subsequent events, the contretemps experienced by Mr. Miranda could only have been slight, for on the following day he called at the office and removed his trunks, alleging that he had decided upon proceeding to Ballarat.

After this date, every trace of the unfortunate Portuguese gentleman in the Australian colonies was lost.

CHAPTER VII.

COLONIAL ENTERPRISE REWARDED.

THE unfortunate Portuguese gentleman! No one, at that moment, in all Australia, deplored the disappearance of Mr. Miranda more than the Spanish consul at Sydney.

The Joint-Stock Bank heard the news with more fortitude, or less sensibility, for, on taking his departure for Melbourne, Mr. Miranda had left a balance with them of something like 17007., and although this sum must one day be accounted for to the Lisbon house, they had the use of the money in the interval.

But Don Antonio de Ayala was inconsolable. His sentiments towards Mr. Miranda had, during their intercourse, ripened into a strong friendship. Mr. Miranda, while at Melbourne, had written to him twice, and in each letter had assured him that as soon as he had completed the business then in hand he should return to Sydney, where he begged he would secure him a private residence. The fact of his having converted his bills into gold had become known to the consul-it was a thing for the rude colonists to make a jest of-and this, coupled with his intended journey to the diggings, led Don Antonio to the inevitable conclusion that his friend had been waylaid and murdered by some of the lawless fellows who skulk in the bush or haunt the bleak wastes which lie between Melbourne and Ballarat.

There were great interests associated with the safety of Mr. Miranda; but independently of this consideration the Spanish consul was a man of too much kind feeling to think of personal inconvenience when he might serve the cause of humanity, and a whole month having gone by without any tidings, he resolved to set out himself for Melbourne.

Immediately on his arrival he set the police in motion for the discovery of the ill-fated capitalist, whose obstinate neglect of good counsel had

VOL. XLV.

R

led him, as the banker who had given it felt certain, to an untimely end.

"I knew how it would be," he said to Don Antonio, when the latter waited on him to make sure that Mr. Miranda had cashed his account"I told him to leave his money behind. Depend upon it you will hear that his body has been found, if ever it is found, in one of the muddy water-holes of Forest Creek, or somewhere thereabouts."

And this opinion, coinciding with that of the Spanish consul, was reiterated by the second banker-the one who had cashed the letter of credit on Messrs. C and Co., of London-who, in coarse phrase, not very humanely added, " And sarve him right !"

Nevertheless, the consul was not deterred, either by his own misgivings or those of others, from using every effort in his power to find his friend, and, after a time, greatly to his joy, he received a telegraphic message to the effect that Mr. Miranda was really at the gold-fields. A second and a third telegram followed his progress from one to another; but all the consul's hopes were dashed to the earth by the receipt of a fourth, which announced that the person who had been taken for Mr. Miranda was a Polish Jew who answered to his description.

What is that wondrous instinct which, like an electric current, suddenly fills men, and more particularly commercial men, with the conviction that "something is not right" in affairs which, on the face of them, bear the very fairest seeming?

In the absence of the Spanish consul at Melbourne a dread of this description took possession of the bosoms of the manager and directors of the Sydney Joint-Stock Bank. They ventured to entertain a doubt of the honesty of Mr. Miranda!

Inquiry, of a kind never set on foot before, tended to strengthen this impression, and it was resolved to send after the absentee a clever detective, Mr. Singleton-his name is worth recording-who was not long before he obtained some intelligence of the gentleman so eagerly sought.

It was, in substance, this :

On the 31st of January, the day on which Mr. Miranda removed his trunks from the Castlemaine coach-office, a person calling himself Monsieur La Prairie took his passage for Callao on board the fast-sailing clipper Good Intent, having previously stipulated that no expense should be spared in laying in wines and provisions for the voyage of the very best quality. From the description of his person and manners there existed no doubt in the mind of Mr. Singleton that Mr. Miranda and Monsieur La Prairie were one and the same individual !

But there had been already one mistaken identity. Might not this be

another?

Alas for commercial integrity-alas for the cause of Portuguese emigration-alas for the Sydney Joint-Stock Bank-and alas for the utterer of the unfeeling remark not long since quoted, the return mails from England brought out the intelligence that both the letters of credit, as well as the Hong-Kong bills, were-most ingenious forgeries!

And thus, for the present, ends the history of Mr. Miranda, who, in all probability, is still enjoying the fruits of his colonial enterprise in the capital of Peru.

THE sky was dimpled blue and white,

The west was leaden grey,

Till in the east rose a fire of red,
That burnt all the fog away.

The thorn-bush seemed new dipped in blood,
The firs were hung with cones,
The oaks were golden green with moss,
The birch wore its silver zones.

The deer with skins of a velvet pile
Were feeding under the boughs

Of the oaks, that stretched their guarding arms
Around the manor-house.

"Twas "Oh!" for the glossy chesnut mare,
And "Hurrah!" for the fiery roan,

But the caps went up in a cloud in the air
For SILVER-SHOE alone.

We left the stable, where the door

Was mailed with winners' shoes,

And we trampled out to the crop-eared down
By laughing ones and twos.

The diamond seed of sprinkling dew
From the firs was shaking down,

As we cantered out by the dark thorned trees,
And over the green hill crown.

The chesnut mare was dancing mad,
The roan gave a snorting shout,
But you never heard a rolling cheer
Till SILVER-SHOE came out.

The starter waved his scarlet flag,
And then we stole along,

Past the line of rails and the nodding heads,

And past the thicker throng.

Gathering up, we trod, we trod,

Till like a boat well rowed,

Together went our hoofs thrown out,
So evenly we strode.

And now we skirt the crescent down,
Past the crimson spotted thorns,
And away we go with a toss of hats
And a driving blast of horns.

Pad, pad together went our hoofs,
Ting, ting the rings and chains,

Chat, chat, chatter over the stones,
Aud splash through the red clay lanes.

A white froth rose on our horses' mouths,
A lather on their hides,

And soon blood-drops from the rowel pricks
Oozed red from dripping sides.

There was the black mare, Yorkshire bred,
And the strong built Irish grey,
But SILVER-SHOE was the only one
To show them all the way.

Strong and wide was his massy chest,
And bright his deep brown eye,
He could do anything but walk,
And everything but fly.

I knew the music of his feet
Over the hollow down,

He was the chosen of the ten,

And the pet of Salisbury town.

Over we went, like skimming birds,

Clean over the wattled fence,

And crash through the bristling purple hedge, With its thorny mailed defence.

The chesnut fell at the water leap,

With its shining fourteen feet;

At the double rail the roan broke down,
But the black mare was not beat.

Together went our double shoes,
Together went our stride,

Till I saw the blood in a crimson thread
Run down Black Bessy's side.

I pushed him at the brook and hedge,
And never touched a twig,

But I shuddered to see a stiff strong fence
That rose up bold and big.

Now ghastly rose the rasping fence,
Broad yawned the ditch below,
I gave him head, and gave him spur,
And let my wild blood go.

The black was down, and I was clear,
Though staggering and blown;
As I rode in trusty SILVER-SHOE
His saddle seemed a throne.

The sky was spinning like a wheel,
The trees were waltzing too,
As off I leaped and clapped the flank
Of the winner-SILVER-SHOE.

Mingle-Mangle by Monkshood.

but made a mingle-mangle and a hotch-potch of it-I cannot tell what.BP. LATIMER's Sermons.

OF OLD WOMEN.

It was only last evening that I was reading over again—what will bear so many readings again, and well repay them-the great old Lakepoet's stanzas, "She was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight,"-inspired by the "dancing shape and image gay" of her that was to be his wife. And in this morning's Times I read, among the Deaths: "On the 17th inst., at Rydal-Mount, Westmoreland, Mary, widow of the late William Wordsworth, aged 88." That obituary arithmetic, with its gravestone numerals, suggestive of many thoughts, which brood over Time, as well as wander through Eternity, shall not, however, disenchant my fancy of the earlier picture-of a gracious youthful presence, with

eyes as stars of twilight fair,

Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.

Heaven forbid that I should ever lose the habit I have, when looking into the face of aged womanhood, of dating some forty (in the case of a Mrs. Wordsworth, some seventy) years back, and conjuring up the face that then was:-like, but O! how different.

In connexion with this habit, I often think of that touching passage in Sir Walter Scott's diary, which records his feelings as he gazed on the shrouded remains of his dead wife. "I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte-my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic-but that yellow masque, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it-can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression? Anne thinks her little changed, because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under circumstances of extreme pain-mine go back to a period of comparative ease." Nay, further back than that-back to a period of absolute ease, and light-heartedness, and bridal joy. Two days later the diary renews the subject: "Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her-cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte-it is not the bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime." Not more dead-so to speak-is the youth of coffined eld than the youth of yet surviving age; and we would but do by the latter, what Sir Walter did beside the former,-renew its youth, in kindly imagination, and revive spring-tide blossoms among the withered leaves.

One of the most characteristic of Mr. Hawthorne's "Twice-told Tales" opens with the remark, that there is hardly a more difficult exercise of