your well-appointed feast, while the very blast that shakes the window-bars wails " for shame.” When you are driven in the hearse, Glim, instead of driving it, you will clutch no more guineas. Let all Glims look well to this.

The undertaker never forgot the pig. Long after it had been eaten and digested Glim nursed vengeance in his heart. Men make great occasions of little things. Wiseacre Curious, Esq., builds, from foot-prints in sandstone, made by an enormous extinct individual of the Batrachian species, a huge folio, embellished with colored plates, and mounting on the foot-prints of the extinct Batrachian, he rides to fame and glory. Prof. Adoniram Grizzle finds a live parasite of an unknown genus, never before classified, upon the tip of a horse hair. IIe forth with posts his discovery to the learned world. It is, with due solemnity, registered in the annals of science as Pediculus Grizzlearius. Straightway, as upon this Flying Childers of discovery, Grizzle mounts and comes out foremost among the savans of his generation at their winning post. Tuneful Timmins writes an ode. The illustrious consort of King Kamehameha, III, august mistress of the Sandwich Islands, and descendant of the renowned Pomare the Great, is fortunately delivered of a fish bone, which threatened to produce a spasm in the royal esophagus. Queen Kamehameha III, in the very crisis, when the destinies of the Sandwich Islands, and of her illustrious line, are all suspended upon this unlucky fishbone, is smitten on the back by the sturdy Welchman Adam Ap Gwenwin, mate of the Buxom Sally, whaler. Straightway the royal nostrils begin to sneeze and the royal esophagus is delivered of the fish bone. Adam Ap Gwenwin is thereupon installed Earl Breadfruit and Baron Cocoanut. Tuneful Timmins feels the inspiration of the muse descending upon him, and is delivered of an ode in hot pressed quarto, dedicated by permission to her Royal Highness Queen Kamehameha, III. Tuneful Timmins, he too, mount

ed upon the fish bone, as on star-hoofed Pegasus, rides to immortality. Great oaks from little acorns grow.

Wagge had a weakness. If every weakness bad its Wagge such good fellows might speedily tame these weaknesses, which often are very ferocious, and make kind domestic tabbies of them. Wagge's weakness was practical jokes. The ghost story of Christmas night has been to him precious as a goose nest in the fen to a stray urchin. Vampire is invited as a guest for the purpose of narrating from his own recollections the authentic story of the Richmanstown ghost. Old Benbow has been a wild fellow. There were awkward stories about him in his youth, but he sings well, with that gruff voice, and will favor them with a ballad. So the pipes and glasses are re-filled.

ROBIN THE ROVER.

Robin the rover is wild as can be;
Robin the rover comes home from the sea;
Many go farther and fare them the worse.
Gold lines his pocket and chinks in his purse.
Fill up your tankards to Robin the Rover;
Though he's ashore he is yet half seas over.

“Robin the rover is courting," they say,
“Dainty-lipped Gillian over the way."
Buxom is she, and as fresh as a cherry,
None round the May-pole were ever so merry.
Fill up your tankards to Robin the Rover,
Blithe as a bee when it sips the wild clover.

Robin is gone, ere a six month he tarried,
Gone as he came, like a rover, unmarried.
Dainty-lipped Gillian sighs through the gloaming;
Turbid and red are the Weir waters foaming.
Fill up your tankards to Robin the Rover :
All the wild honey is gone from the clover.

Splash! what is that?— 'tis the pride of the village.
Robin the freebooter flies from the pillage;
All the wild midnight roll on the red waters.
This is the doom of the pride of our daughters.
Fill up your tankards to Robin the Rover.
Sail where he may he is still half seas over.

Fire from the gun-deck! The cannon balls rattle,
Robin the pirate is foremost in battle.
Out from the wave gleams a white face before him;
Shot from the yard-arm the waters break o'er him.
Fill up your tankards to Robin the Rover,
Gone with the Ghost now his life-yarn is over.

Benbow liked a song; so did Wagge, but this ballad of the old Forester's cast a gloom upon the company and led to talking of sad cases of unfortunate maidens who had been abandoned by their lovers and become castaways, and of bold fellows who had gone to foreign parts to retrieve their fortunes and never come back afterward; and

so, when Aminadab Vampire narrated his story of the ghost it chimed in well with their saddened mood. Brickdust was the exception. The conversation then took a turn about retributions that had overtaken prosperous men, who, in the days when they were well to do in the world, had been cruel to the poor. Brickdust thought that this was all gammon. “He had always observed,” he said, " that your milk hearted fellows were not the stuff as came to be Lord Mayors, or to drive their own gigs. What had retribution to do with sausages or with potted meats for the Colonies ? a man sold his meats and got his money. If he was shrewd he bought more pigs and made more sausages.

He sold more sausages and potted meats and bought more pigs still, and so he kept on. It was all a matter of pounds, shill

, ings and pence. Old Glim was a hard fellow, but he coined money with his hearse. Yet Glim turned a young strip of a lass into the street a Christmas night. He wouldn't have done it but then couldn't interfere, not being the master of the house. What misfortune had overtaken Glim?"

Roger Benbow pricked up his ears. The fox head upon his cane looked more knowing than ever. The Forester was on the scent after the child, urged by ten thousand pounds. Besides he held a clue that no man knew of.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GIPSY'S REVENGE.

Sloppery Parish was indignant. They had raised the poor rates. A meeting of house-holders was called in the Town Hall. It was a hard winter and great distress reigned among the operatives. The Reverend and Honorable Alphonso Bushwig was appointed chairman. Then Dr. Bumblefuz made his speech, reported afterward in the County Chronicle as “Bumblefuz's great speech.”

Bumblefuz was profound on the population question.“Every hair of his wig,” he remarked, "stood out horrified in speechless indignation, when he considered the enormous wickedness of poor men having families. This outrage must be put a stop to. A superfluous population only tended to mendicancy, robbery and the increase of taxation. Something must be done to arrest the increase of population. It was well enough for a gentleman with landed estates, a thriving butcher, or grocer, or for professional men with rising incomes, to venture on the prospect of a family. He had no objections to any man's having a family who was able to support a family, to pay tithes, taxes, house rent, butcher's and tailor's bills, and so on.

But no man had a right to have a family unless he was sure that they would never be a charge upon the public.” “Look,” continued the orator, “at these work houses and these outdoor and in-door poor. It all came from a superfluous population. We must reduce the rates, cease out-door relief, and then we should put a stop to these enormities. If we