'Jonathan,' I once said to him - but bah! autres temps, autres mœurs. Another magnum, James."

with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee then? Do I not see thee still ?" This was My ancestress

passing strange.

She

This was all very well. "My good sir," I said, "it may suit you to order but there is no need to bottles of '20 port, at a guinea a publish her revered name - did bottle; but that kind of price does not indeed live at Bungay Saint Mary's, suit me. I only happen to have where she lies buried. She used to thirty-four and sixpence in my pock-walk with a tortoise-shell cane. et, of which I want a shilling for the waiter, and eighteenpence for my cab. You rich foreigners and swells may spend what you like" (I had him there for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes-man's); "but a man with a family, Mr. Whatd'you-call'im, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone."

"Bah!" he said. "Nunkey pays for all, as you say. I will what you call stant the dinner, if you are so poor!" and again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious crooked-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But I was not so afraid of him now, for we were in a public place; and the three glasses of port-wine had, you see, given me

courage.

"What a pretty snuff-box!" he remarked as I handed him mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me. "Yes; a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies most ladies, carried a box

used to wear little black velvet shoes,
with the prettiest high heels in the
world.
"Did you
- did you
know, then,
my great gr-ndm-ther?" I said.
He pulled up his coat-sleeve-"Is
that her name? he said.
"Eliza

"

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in red on his arm.

"You knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss

?"

As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's maiden name. Her maiden name was -. Her honored married name was -.

"She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.

Merciful powers! I remember, over the old shagreen knife and spoon case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his nay, two boxes- tabatière and bonbon-shoulders, was over the mantelpiece, nière. What lady carries snuff-box and Poseidon won the Newmarket now, hey? Suppose your astonish- Cup in the year 1783! ment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!-ah! that was a time, that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk

"Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your grandf—, ha!"

As he said "Ha!" there came three quiet little taps on the tableit is the middle table in the "Gray'sinn Coffee-house," under the bust of the late Duke of W-1l-ngt-n.

"I fired in the air," he continued ;

"did I not?" (Tap, tap, tap.) | eas, and the façon we will put at six "Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards. Captain Brown,' I said, 'who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?' She is there! She is there!" (Tap, tap, tap.) Yes, my first love But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means No."

There was the paper before me, wet with the ink. There was the pen which THE HAND had used. Does anybody doubt me? I have that pen now. A cedar-stick of a not uncommon sort, and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand now, I tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check, for such the document was, was the writing of a female. It ran thus: "London, midnight, March 31, 1862. Pay the bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia. To Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London."

"Noblest and best of women!" said Pinto, kissing the sheet of paper with much reverence. My good Mr. Roundabout, I suppose you do not question that signature?

Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto, and Co., is known to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enormously wealthy establishment. There was only one little difficulty, the Countess Rachel died last October.

I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper to Pinto with a

sneer.

|ly acceded, reminding him, by the way, that he had not yet told me the story of the headless man.

"Your poor gr-ndm-ther was right just now, when she said she was not my first love. 'Twas one of those banale expressions (here Mr. P. blushed once more) "which we use to women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first love; no woman any man's. We are in love in our nurse's arms, and women coquette with their eyes before their tongue can form a word. How could your lovely relative love me? I was far, far too old for her. I am older than I look. I am so old that you would not believe my age were I to tell you. I have loved many and many a woman before your relative. It has not always been fortunate for them to love me. Ah, Sophronia! Round the dreadful circus where you fell, and whence I was dragged corpselike by the heels, there sat multitudes more savage than the lions which mangled your sweet form! Ah, tenez! when we marched to the terrible stake together at Valladolid · the Protestant and the J- But away with memory! Boy! it was happy for thy grandam that she loved me not.

"C'est a brendre ou à laisser," he said with some heat. "You literary men are all imprudent; but I did not tink you such a fool wie dis. Your box is not worth twenty pound, and "During that strange period," he I offer you a tausend because I know went on "when the teeming Time you want money to pay dat rascal was great with the revolution that Tom's college bills." (This strange was speedily to be born, I was on man actually knew that my scapegrace a mission in Paris with my excelTom has been a source of great ex-lent, my maligned friend, Cagliostro. pense and annoyance to me.) You Mesmer was one of our band. I see money costs me nothing, and you seemed to occupy but an obscure rank refuse to take it! Once, twice; will in it: though, as you know, in secret you take this check in exchange for societies the humble man may be a your trumpery snuff-box?" chief and director the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It boots not to tell it; why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to

What could I do? My poor granny's legacy was valuable and dear to me, but after all a thousand guineas are not to be had every day. "Be it a bargain," said I. Shall we have a glass of wine on it?" says Pinto; and to this proposal I also unwilling

accident shortened her life. Poor
thing! she had a foolish sister who
urged her on. I always told her to
beware of Ann. She died. They
said her brothers killed me.
A gross
falsehood. Am I dead?
could I pledge you in this wine?"
"Was your name," I asked, quite
bewildered, was your name, pray,
then, ever Blueb-?"

If I were,

you, but which yet you cannot under- | dreadful fate befell poor Fatima. An stand? Words are symbols of things which you know, or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly thirty-eight minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored, and, to relieve my ennui, drank a half glass or so of wine.) "LOVE, friend, is the fountain of youth! It may not happen to me once-once in an age: but when I love, then I am young, I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee-ah, how fondly! Wine, I say, more wine! Love is ever young. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Béchamel -the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false!" the strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more agitated than he had been when speaking about my gr-ndm-th-r.

"Hush! the waiter will overhear you. Methought we were speaking of Blanche de Béchamel. I loved her, young man. My pearls, and diamonds, and treasure, my wit, my wisdom, my passion, I flung them all into the child's lap. I was a fool! Was strong Samson not as weak as I? Was Solomon the Wise much better when Balkis wheedled him? I said to the king- But enough of that, I spake of Blanche de Béchamel.

"Curiosity was the poor child's foible. I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night). To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove coax it from me- from meha! ha!

"I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all ages. I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to their Sanscrit source, and whisper to her the darkling mysteries of Egypto tian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus that rang in the dishevelled Eleusinian revel: I could tell her, and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear of Solomon - You don't attend. Psha! you have drunk too much wine!" Perhaps I may as well own that I was not attending, for he had been carrying on for about fifty-seven minutes; and I don't like a man to have all the talk to himself.

"Blanche de Béchamel was wild, then, about this secret of Masonry. In early, early days I loved, I married a girl fair as Blanche, who, too, was tormented by curiosity, who, too, would peep into my closet-into the only secret I guarded from her. A

"I had an apprentice the son of a dear friend, who died by my side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whose army I happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat for neglecting my advice. The young Chevalier Goby de Mouchy was glad enough to serve as my clerk, and help in some chemical experiments in which I was engaged with my friend Dr. Mesmer. Bathilde saw this young man. Since women were, has it not been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure? Away! From the very first it has been so!" And as my companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to the first woman.

"One evening I went, as was my