far as to be able to speak, and the first words I spoke was an order to a man to ride as hard as he could go to the police-station and bring back with him the superintendent. "My sister came to my bedside as the man left the room. We were always strongly attached to each other; but I was surprised to see her so agitated by, as I supposed, the .attack made on me. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she looked so worn and pale that feared she was ill. After answering her questions with respect to myself, I said,— "You were with our aunt when I made those photographs of poor Fanny's murderer, and have never seen one, have you? I thought not,' I continued ; "but if you open the pocket-book which is in the breast-pocket of my coat you will see it.' "She opened it, took out the portrait, and, looking at it, said, 'This is not it. This is my husband's portrait. Where did you get it?' "Your husband! Fanny's brother !—her murderer!' I stammered. The truth flashed upon our minds at the same instant. "For several hours she remained totally insensible; and when at last she became conscious, she talked incoherently, and has not since recovered the use of her reason. the body had been found. I sat here buried "I lay in the field all that night. In the morning I was seen by the man who came to finish the ploughing, and he, with the help of the keepers, carried me home. I was quite unable to move; but I had a dreamlike consciousness of what was being done. By the time I was laid on the bed I had recovered so "I was thankful, when I was told that the superintendent had arrived, that I had not had time or opportunity to mention to anybody but my sister the cause of my being found insensible. Leaving it to be inferred that it was due to sudden illness, I gave the superintendent to understand that I had sent for him to direct a search after my brother-in-law, who had not been seen since the preceding evening. After he had made inquiries among the servants he came back to tell me that he would send over a constable to follow up the matter. As he was leaving the room, I said, carelessly,— "Have you still got the portrait I gave you Is several years ago?' 666 'No,' he replied. I kept it about two years; but it had then faded almost entirely away, and then I threw it into the fire.' "I made him no answer; but I was thankful that the copy I had given him had been less durable than my own. "It was found that my sister's husband had gone to London; and that is the last I heard concerning him. "Do I think he was his sister's murderer? you ask. Is it possible to doubt it? I have no hesitation whatever in saying that in all cases where death occurs in broad daylight, and especially when it is caused by similar means, the last object on which the eye rests will be found depicted on the retina after death, and from Darkness may be brought into Light." crowd here in Florian, which is equivalent to solitude, for no one knows what his neighbour is chattering; Anna Bazzuri in "Beatrice" has excited you far beyond sleep, albeit the Campanile clock has tolled out its solemn ONE. They will let you in at Daniele's at any hour at which you choose to ring the bell which hangs, delcussée, on the Piazza dei Shiavoni, so half an hour, more or less, signifies little. I am not indisposed to talk, and will tell you a story. Bottega! un caffe e fuoco." Let me place my interlocutor before my readers. A man whom a careless observer might have described as old, for his hair was grey, "but not with years," as you discovered when you looked at him. There was a roundness of contour, a vigour, a flexibility in his movements, that pertained not to advanced age, and belied the promise of the grizzled hairs, in which but few chesnut remnants recalled their earlier hue. All this showed that the aspect of age was but the disguise of prematurely blasted youth, and arrested attention on the person who, one fine night, in St. Mark's Square, Venice, thus bespoke him who now writes. There was bright moonlight; the broad square was afloat in radiance; the many domed, multi-pinnacled cathedral loomed out like some Cyclop-work in frosted silver; down the arcades streamed lines of idlers, purposelessly gloating over the glittering goldsmith's ware at the arched angle of the "Merceria," or the equally glistening, if less costly, objets de Venise, the shell gauds of the neighbouring traveller traps. In Florian and Sattil overflowed a mass of loungers, frothing over into the outer breadth of the Piazza, playing chess, drinking coffee, eating ice, hatching treason, abusing the Austrians; it was 1859, and the Lombard campaign was imminent. There is your scene, now for the dramatis personæ. Imprimis. Your servant, not very tall; stout (his enemies say squat, but that's mendacious), auburn of hair (the detractor's aforesaid call it red, but that's their ill-nature), not ill-looking (his private opinion), very expressive countonance, and gentlemanlike exterior-of course. Secundo. The narrator, nothing out of the common; none of your melo-dramatic heroes, not the slightest flavour of daggers or trapdoors about him, all nineteenth century, modern and polished. He was prematurely grizzled, not his fault, as he said, but his misfortune. The man could moon all day over Basilica, chiesa, or Accademia; was unwearying in sight-seeing, the most exhaustive of tests; had a wrist of catgut in a salle d'armes; could sit up till daylight at opera, or postopera orgie; seemed to renounce sleep and disown fatigue, yet had the exterior of elder manhood. He lived as one beyond all sordid necessities, all the waifs and strays of Venice flocked round him as to a certain haven for mendicity, and the omnipotent Austrian police was cap-in-hand to him in all places. I never understood him, and ended by giving him up. Let him speak for himself. "I think I hinted that murder now and then managed to slip through the meshes of our wisdom; of course you will say that to be safe it must be subtle, that the coarse, violent assassin pays a premium on detection. "I knew a man, a 'party' if you like, since the mot is popular. Where did he live? well, say India; Hindostan is wide. Suppose we call him Smith, the forgery may be pardoned. "I knew him—not a bad creature, kindly and well enough disposed towards his fellow men. We will describe him as a subaltern of Native Infantry, aged nine-and-twenty or so, and married for the past three years; his wife, a fairly pretty woman, some four years his junior. He was a popular, pleasant man, and content with his lot. But-aye! there's always a but —this man, in a sort of fool's paradise, lived content. When, without any particular warning, his life clouded; his wife fell ill, grew worse, medical men did their best (we won't say to kill her), and the end of it was that she he loved lay a dying.' 'My dear fellow, nerve yourself, we can do no more, she will die,' so spake the regimental doctor, and the rumble of his departing wheels rolled out the requiem of his hearer's longings, and he knew that all the devotion of years was coming to naught, and he had to tell her. How was it to be done? God knows how, but in some incoherent wise it was accomplished, and, out of his insanity, knowledge came to her. She knew that she must die; and he, more shattered of heart than she, grovelled by her couch and, what? prayed? Did he? I suspect he must have gone nearer to what you would have called blaspheming. "When a hand touched his, and a voice spoke; Tom, don't break that simple man's heart of yours about me,' and somehow there was a hard cynical ring in the tone which grated on the husband. 'I am not worth it, Tom. I have carried about me, long enough, the weight of a deception, the burden of a lie. In my own despite, in the candour of death, I am speaking out. I shall teach you to curse me, my poor Tom; but I must tell you, I cannot die and hoodwink you. Your manly faith has not faltered, and I must, at last, be true.' "What was going to be disclosed, what black arcana were to be revealed! He sat in paralysis, she went on, and of what she said this is the epitome. "Suddenly ordered on service (his regiment had taken part in the Sutledj campaign), he, like so many others, had to leave his wife behind, and alone. One they knew had, in the long weariness of those lonely days, wormed himself into her confidence, her affection, had triumphed and remained exultant. On her fell sickness, repentance, confession, death; on her husband, solitude, without even a loving regret to mitigate its bitterness-he remaining unscathed. "Well, well and Nemesis ? Listen. A January afternoon, a broad expanse of level yellow-green (a crop of wheat and pease; these things ripen then in India), a line of coolies, two Englishmen, gun in hand, away buzz the quail—brrr, brrr,—piff, paff my bird,' 'your eye wiped, old fellow,' 'hold on, load,' &c., &c., all right,' 'line bandho,' 'chulo,' -brrr, brrr,-piff, paff,-piff, paff,-'Oh, my God!' and a hurry of feet, and a man down, and blood on the trampled corn, not blood of quail ! The "And while men of dark skin hurry away on foot to seek aid, one fair-skinned and fairhaired man, unharmed, bends over another who lies prone in the ripening harvest. wounded man is very pale, the sound man, with fingers compressing the wound in his companion's thigh, to all appearance very earnest for his welfare. Brown-hued humanity is hurrying hither and thither. The white man, unhurt, watches closely the injury done by his unlucky shot (his uncocked gun had exploded suddenly), a space is left around the twain. Then speaks he who is unscathed. 666 hints of many years spent abroad, and in torrid climes. And again, he had a way of looking at the Austrian troops, whenever he saw them under arms, and a quick appreciation of defects or good points in their tenue or their manoeuvres, that had in it a smack of the barrack yard and parade ground. Had he ever lived in India, I wonder? Was it, perchance, his own story which he had thus half-scoffingly sketched?—who knows? He was just the kind of man whom I should decline to trust, if feeling that I had played him any trick for which he was likely to bear me malice. MY FIRST TWO DAYS ON THE GROUSE HILLS. IT too often falls to our lot to be weary, exhausted, nervous, and irritable through overmuch mental exertion, and the best counterirritant and relief which we have ever found is the fish-rod, the gun, and the country inn. Fashionable watering-places, heavy hotel bills, and listless promenades, sometimes make one worse instead of better; and besides, they are too expensive, and not sufficiently vigorous. The cheap, simple, and innocent recreations of fishing and shooting bring one into fellowship with nature. The influence of the sun and wind, the fresh air and the bracing breeze, the new sights and the varying objects which everywhere arrest the eye and strike the senses, form a wholesome and refreshing contrast to rejected manuscripts, half finished articles, and piles of books waiting to be read. The broad and bright expanse of the heavens is a relief from the study ceiling, dim with tobacco smoke; and to eat your bread and cheese with 'Bryan, you will never more mislead wife of a voracious appetite at the foot of the mountain stream is a healthier meal than a raw mine.' "And he removes his finger from the mutton chop eaten by the dull embers of a fire severed artery. "And straightway the wounded man, who, with every fibre in his shot-shattered frame has been holding on to life, abjures existence; looks up in his friend's face, sees in it what extinguishes all vitality in him, tries to speak and fails, and in the sudden horror-dies. "And murder will out? Bon à savoir! Bottega! un gelato di limonada." He ate his ice, looking just a little pale, for he had excited himself as he went on. We strolled round the Piazza; and then, passing in front of the cathedral and the palace, parted at the corner of the Piazzetta. In a day or two afterwards, the rail rolled me away toward Milan and Turin. This odd story has since recurred to me, while, at times, I recall scraps of my quondam associate's conversation, which had in them which you have forgotten to keep burning. Returning from an evening walk, in a very dyspeptic condition, we found a note upon the study table, and a glance at the caligraphy showed it to be the hand-writing of a hale and generous man, whom we may as well call the Baron, or, to use the mock-heroic style, a baron of high degree. The note was not a cynical criticism from some captious editor, but a hearty invitation to a couple of days with the grouse. To write a grateful acceptance of an invitation so considerately and kindly given, was to fire the imagination with fresh inspiration and new life. Fancy speedily shook the heavy slumber from her wings and roved about in merry flight. The prospect of long shots, the exciting cripple chase, a rapid right and left cleverly dealt, and both birds well brought down; the hopes of heavy game bags, and sporting tales by the evening fire, soon transformed the languid study into a place of reactionary excitement, strong physical determinations, accompanied by pleasing sensations of returning health. The day for making the necessary preparations soon arrived. The gun had to be examined, and the shooting boots, and the shooting dress, and the ammunition stores. Were the springs of the elastic and the shot belts in good order? A few hours of pleasant exertion saw everything nicely packed, and ready for the start on the morrow. No one in the house worked harder at the preparations than our favourite companion, retriever Carlo. He seemed to understand all that was going on; he pushed his nose here and there, wagged his tail, jumped about, and interfered with everything. Poor Carlo appeared to think that nothing would be done right unless he helped and meddled; and not even the thumps which the servant gave him, for nearly knocking her over as he dashed past her with a shooting boot in his mouth, could sober his gleesome zeal. At last the bustle of preparation was over; Carlo was ordered to his sleeping quarters, and we turned into ours. The expectation of new and anxiously-desired excitements in the approaching day have caused many a sleepless night; and even if we could have slept soundly, Carlo's noisy restlessness rendered it impossible. In and out of his kennel, rattling his chain till his hollow wooden house sounded like a drum, barking at the policeman, and hammering his heavy tail with prodigious and resounding force against the yard door, as if he were hunting on his own account, and beating the bushes for game; lying down for an hour, then suddenly waking, and going through the entire performance again. All this was done, no doubt, in the full belief that he was giving his master and his neighbours a specimen of how clever and industrious he could be when he put himself to his best; but this was by no means the first mistaken exhibition of noisy talent which Carlo had displayed; and if we had not been very fond of him, with every confidence in his good intentions, he would have received a chastising visit, whip in hand. The drowsy morning, which seemed as if it never would come, at length arrived, and the half-sleepless bed was exchanged for the cold shower bath. Immediately before starting a note was handed in from Mr. Overeager-of whom more hereafter-stating, dogmatically enough, that Carlo must be left at home, as he would be of no use on the moors. The intimation was ridiculous; but as we had to share Mr. Overeager's dog-cart, there was nothing left for it but to acquiesce. It was painful work to order Carlo back to his kennel, and the gun case was ordered to be concealed from him in order to lessen his disappointment. He stood in the passage, poor fellow! the very picture of sadness, and, with a strange expression of injured innocence in his eyes, he refused either to lie down or go to his kennel; and so the front door was reluctantly closed upon him. Overeager's wife was behind time, as usual, and the hour appointed for starting was necessarily delayed. When at length we found ourselves on the road, and clear of the town, the beautiful sunshine put us all into good humour: and there lay before us the delightful prospect of a five-and-twenty miles' drive through au agricultural district, and in charming weather. Most of the corn had already been housed in the farm-yards; but here and there a solitary field was still out, and the sheaves looked very miserable in their loneliness. Some farmers are always behind, as Mr. Overeager remarked. This gentleman is passionately fond of the Italian language, which he anglicises and uses very frequently, sometimes for fun, or to add to his importance, as the case may be. "Andiamo ad una caccia," said he to the first toll-gate keeper, as she handed him his change. In passing through the game-preserved districts, Mr. Overeager distinguished himself by the quickness of his sight in the discovery of hare runs, rabbit holes, likely places for pheasants, and partridge covies lying hidden in the grass and stubbles. The proximity of game, in one instance, placed our travelling companion under strong temptation to load his gun. His trigger-finger jerked the drivingreins; but, fortunately, the mischievous impulse went no further. Mr. Overeager was once travelling along this same road when a remarkable adventure befell himself and his friend. At the bottom of the wayside ditch, peering above some tall grass, they discovered something red. Was it a bunch of hips or haws? Not a likely place for such things. Then what was it? Get out and see. Goodness gracious! here is a wild-goose squat at the bottom of the ditch, completely exhausted by his long flight from Norway. To bag the game and drive on was the work of a moment. But the canny sportsmen had not driven far when they made another discovery. They came upon the remainder of the flock of wild geese, cowering in mortal terror at the bottom of the ditch. Bag them all? The bag would not hold them; and before they had lifted half the flock out of the ditch, they found that several of the geese had their wings tied. But as wild geese are not generally in the habit of having their wings tied, the truth broke upon the |