"I tell you what, Arthur, if you do anything of the sort, I will never forgive you."

"I should never forgive myself if you're plucked through me. I declare to you I will start instantly if you do not tell me whether or not what I suspect be true. Not that I have any doubt about it: I know it is so. Now tell me, that's a good fellow, is it not?"

"Will you promise not to say a word to them if I tell you?" asked Sumner.

would not return it to you. By ten o'clock to-morrow morning your father, and mother, and sister, will have all read your letter; and you are not going to be so wantonly cruel as to occasion them such a bitter disappointment as you propose, when I beseech you and entreat you as a friend, as the greatest favour you can render me, to let things be as they are. I declare to you I feel a greater happiness at being instrumental in causing so much joy to your mother and sister, than if I had got a first and carried off the

No, I will not," he replied, placing his cap on Newdigate, and all the prizes, and fellowships, and his head, and snatching up his gown.

"Arthur," said Sumner, gravely advancing to his friend, and placing his hand on his shoulder, "you gave me your word of honour you would never mention the subject to any one, and that you would listen to all I had to say, and weigh it well."

Hang my word of honour sky-high. Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum!" replied Lamb, angrily, and he made a movement towards the door.

"Well, I have always taken you for a man of your word!" said Sumner.

"I almost wish I had neither a word nor an honour," replied Lamb,, hastily, and, dashing his gown and cap upon the sofa, he flung himself back in the chair in which he had read himself into a first class.

"But you have got both, old fellow," said Sumner. "And now just listen to me. What does it matter to me my not getting through? I shall not have to-"

"Matter?" interrupted Lamb, "as much as it does to me! It shan't be! and nothing you can say shall dissuade me from that."

"Now let us have a little manners. Don't interrupt me," replied Sumner; "you really are the very most obstinate fellow of my acquaintance."

that sort of thing, the whole University has to offer. Besides, by-the-bye, I forgot to tell you that I am to go up again next time, and shall, perhaps, get a first instead of a second."

"You're a clever fellow, Sumner," said his friend. "It all sounds very true and pretty what you say, but it does not convince me. And you are to have the bore of staying up at this detestable place another half year."

Punning, positively! well, I am glad to observe you are getting into a better humour," remarked Sumner, almost hoping that his friend had relented.

"And all the racking anxiety of another honour examination," exclaimed Lamb, from the midst of a brown study into which he had plunged, "I won't hear of it! It shall not be!"

My dear fellow, you will not remember," pursued the indefatigable Sumner, "that I have not the same cause for anxiety about it as you have had; and as to the honour and glory of it, I don't care the matter of that about it," said he, filliping his fingers in the

"So I may be, and so I mean to be, about this," he air; "I am profoundly indifferent to it." replied.

"Will you promise me-I ask you as a favour, not to do anything about it before the morning?" asked Sumner.

"I will not."

"My dear fellow, just think how pleased the old boy will be!"

"The old tyrant! it is just all through him that this has happened! What do I want with a first class?" And, starting from his chair, he paced up and down the room in a very ill frame of mind with regard to all obligations of filial dutifulness.

"I shall have no hopes of you if you talk in that way," said Sumner. "Just imagine what exquisite pleasure the news of your first class will afford that sweet sister of yours, and the dear old lady, whom I love as much as you do,-a great deal more, I shall begin to think, if you go on in this way; I can just fancy her eyes filling with tears as she reads your letter, and then her having a hearty good cry for joy." "Oh, the letter!" exclaimed Lamb, "true, I had forgotten that. I must be off to the office, and see if I cannot recover it."

"That is impossible," replied Sumner, "the office has been shut this hour, and, if it were not, they

"Not you," answered Lamb. 'However, nothing you can say shall persuade me to have a first class at the expense of your pluck, and so now here goes;' and he again moved towards the door, having assumed his cap and gown rather more quietly this time than the previous one.

Only wait till the morning," entreated Sumner, detaining him, "I ask you as a favour."

At this moment Lamb's oak was threatened with speedy demolition by a thundering battery outside.

"Who's that?" exclaimed Sumner, opening the door. "What now, Roakes? Been ill-treating that poor wretch Moses? too full of milk-punch to get home, eh?"

"Oh! here's the devil to pay!" exclaimed Lionel Roakes, as soon as the oak had answered his unceremonious salutations. "Here's that ugly red-haired Teddy-Hall man, as mad as a Bedlamite. He's got into my rooms, nobody knows how. He swears they are his, and that he's tutor of Baliol. He's savage, and makes such hideous noises, and looks so queer, that I'm afraid to touch him. Do come and help me with him."

Away went Sumner and Lamb immediately with Roakes to assist him in disposing of his unwelcome

visitant. On entering the room, sure enough, there was the red-haired man crouched up in a corner of the room. The light of two large naphtha lamps fell on his wild eyes, as he regarded the three with that peculiar demoniac stare, that look of cowardly ferocity, which is the almost invariable accompaniment of a deranged intellect.

"Come, old carroty, turn out of that; get to your own quarters, or I shall have to make you!" was Roakes's agreeable salutation, who himself exhibited symptoms of a tolerably regular nightly weakness, which rendered his voice a trifle thick, and his gait a trifle unsteady.

"Don't speak to the poor fellow in that coarse way, Roakes," whispered Sumner, "or you may manage him by yourself. What can be the use of irritating him?"

During the few moments occupied by Sumner in whispering these words to Roakes, the poor maniac was wildly eyeing each of the three in turn. "U-z-z-z," he howled through his clenched teeth. "What are you going to move me for? First class, Rudolph, St. Edmund Hall. Ha! ha! ha! Tutor of Baliol! Go from my rooms, gentlemen."

MRS. SUMNER, at her daughter's earnest entreaties, prolonged her stay in Hyde Park Gardens considerably beyond the time she had originally proposed. Tenderly had Mrs. Perigord ever loved her mother; and if she were conscious of a sensation of dread at the prospect of her departure, little recked she of any other cause for its existence. She loved her husband, it is true,-loved him passionately; and yet it was not to be expected that that passion should render her insensible to the separation from her mother, she was now for the first time about to experience. A new fireside, a new home, a new object of daily veneration and love, a new converse, a new locality, new friends and scenes. Oh! how vividly each familiar object of her early years rose before her mind now! The dear old cottage at Bribe worth; the bed-room which overlooked the still, broad river; and into the windows of which the roses peeped in spring and summer; the diningroom, from underneath whose windows a myrtle hedge breathed its fragrance into the apartments, and

"Now, my poor fellow, what do you want? you are unwell," said Lamb, walking towards him. "Will | you take my arm and allow me to show you home?" The madınan, as Lamb approached him, slowly reared himself up in his corner, trembling violently; his arms and hands remained hanging down, rigidly fixed against his sides, as they had done in the quad-in front of which a small copse of beeches, aspens, rangle whilst he was awaiting the reading of the list, but with the rest of his short thick frame trembling and shuddering, while his hair stood out on end. His bloodshot eyes glared so fearfully upon Lamb, who, not very wisely, had now approached close to him, that the poor fellow's heart failed him just as he was about to extend his arm, and he began to make a movement backward. The wretched being perceiving this, uttered a hideous howl, and snatching a sharp, pointed knife from his pocket, struck upwards, and plunged it into Arthur Lamb's side to the very hilt. He made a spring into the air, and fell down upon the floor of Roakes's rooms a corpse. The maniac, wildly yelling, rushed into the college quadrangle, where, in the course of an hour, he was with considerable difficulty secured. Poor Sumner remained for some minutes fixed to the spot, perfectly motionless. The blow which had killed his friend had stunned himself. He could not remove his eyes from the fearful corpse at his feet; and had not life enough within him to render the slightest assistance. And none he could have rendered, had he been able, would have been of any service to his friend lying dead at his feet. He even saw not the bustling, officious, and coarse proceedings of Lionel Roakes. At length, bursting into tears of the bitterest agony, he fell prostrate on the corpse, and, laying upon the face of his friend, now no more, his own pale cheek, sobbed like a child.

firs, and elms, concealed the lower part of a hill which sloped upwards to a great height behind them; the drawing-room opening on the well-kept lawn, studded with evergreen and other shrubs, standard rose-trees, and fantastic flower receptacles of every size and description, and jewelled on summer nights with the "glowworm's ineffectual fire,” the stock of which it had been for years her constant pleasure and amusement to keep replenished from the green lanes in the neighbourhood. Every flower almost in the garden, its exact position, and its very history, the rose-trees she herself had budded, the laurustinus hedge, in which the thrushes and blackbirds built, and, more precious than all, the dear bright face and active figure of her mother, which were associated with these things; now superintending the domestic arrangements in the drawing or dining-room, now talking with her by the hour together in her bed-room, at one time briskly gathering nosegays wherewith to bedeck and scent the rooms, at another watering the flowers, raking and hoeing at times, or sitting under the trees hard at work for some poor neighbour,-all came vividly up before her mind, as though she were amongst them still. She could feel almost as though she were, so long as that tenderly beloved parent remained who caused them to be so dear to her. But as the time for her departure drew on, she began to experience that sinking sensation which the words good bye" can scarcely ever be uttered without producing. How much more under such circumstances as the present!

Thus at all events did Lucy Perigord account for that excessive depression,-a sensation amounting to dread,-which almost overpowered her, as the unwelcome day of separation drew near; and lent an eloquence altogether irresistible to her appeals to her mother in behalf of a much longer visit. Whether what she supposed did fully account for it, or some other unperceived cause contributed; certain it is that the feeling, instead of diminishing, gained strength from day to day.

About a week has now elapsed since the last of those days on which she received her friends as the bride of George Jones Thompson Perigord, Esq. Mrs. Sumner is to leave the following day. It is nine o'clock A.M. Breakfast is in readiness in the apartment appropriated to that meal. A bust of Pitt, finely executed by Gibson, on the nose of which a bluebottle is busily washing its wings and face, stares with lack-lustre eyes from the top of an alabaster pedestal at Mr. Perigord, who is at present the only occupant of the room. He is reposing in an extensive attitude in an easy chair. A well-bred spaniel of the King Charles breed is lying near him at full length upon the velvet pile carpet, against which it incessantly strikes its tail, which is wagging with delight at its master's unwonted condescension. For Mr. Perigord has indeed vouchsafed to place his foot against its side, and is abstractedly rubbing it with his polished leather slipper; whilst "Harry," with one paw on his master's shining foot, is licking off the polish in a determined and luxurious manner.

.not the gay footsteps of his wife when she entered the apartment.

Lightly Mrs. Perigord tripped up to her husband's chair, and stood for a few seconds at his back waiting for a lucid interval. Then, by a sudden impulse of playfulness, she threw her arms round his neck, imprinted a kiss upon his forehead, and offered him the largess of a penny for his thoughts.

Had she a distant hope that she herself might have a place in those profound musings? He was playing with her favourite dog, her brother's namesake,— why not?

The suddenness of his wife's salutation deprived Mr. Perigord for a few moments of his usual selfpossession. He had just been made First Lord of the Treasury, and he was instantaneously displaced. Starting from his chair with undiplomatic rapidity, the bluebottle flew buzzing off from Pitt's nose in a fright, while an alabaster Italian boy all but left off picking the thorn from his foot; (an occupation he had been assiduously engaged in ever since he had first received the honour of a place in Mr. Perigord's breakfasting apartment)-down went a cut-glass sugar vase, set in a richly chased silver frame of slender proportions, and powdered the velvet-pile carpet with its contents; and poor Harry, receiving a great part of the weight of Mr. Perigord's body on his ribs, set up a piteous howling, rushed away a few paces to get clear of the mischief, and then came cringing back, bending and trailing along its body, turning up its head, and wagging its tail, as though And what are the subjects that so engross Mr. it would ask pardon for not having been quite Perigord's thoughts as to render him insensible to the abolished, or for not having borne its agony more polish of his slippers? Is he lost in admiration of the quietly. Whether George Jones Thompson Perigord, deep experimental wisdom of Aristotle's ethical sys- Esq. was irated at being so unceremoniously transtem? Or deciding whether he held the immortaliity lated from the Cabinet Council to his own breakfasting of the soul? Or is it his philosophy of rhetoric that room, or at the rapidity of movement into which he thus engrosses him? Is he wrapt in the mazy but had been betrayed, and which had resulted in so profound speculations of Plato, and allowing himself much awkwardness, or by a slight pain he was suf to be delivered of his ignorance in true Socratic fering from having struck his knee against the arm style? Or is he engaged in a critical comparison of of the chair in withdrawing his foot too rapidly from Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal, Boileau, Pope, Byron, the yelping spaniel, or by all combined,-into a conand Cervantes, as satirists? The Straussian philosophy siderable state of excitement that gentleman unthe new generation-railroads are these, or topics | doubtedly broke. Poor supplicating Harry was like them, the subjects of his thoughts? Or is he received with a kick that sent him limping and thinking of the beauty and goodness of his young yelping in piteous fashion to the other end of the bride, and of his bright prospects of domestic bliss ? room, pursued by the following imprecatory address: Of none of these things is Mr. Perigord thinking. "Take that, you ungainly, noisy, little mischievous He is musing on his re-election for Oxford; on his | br-ho-cur." And then, recovering himself somespeeches in Parliament, so argumentative, so business-what-" Lucy," he continued, calmly, "I have a like, and practical; on his gift of memory, which has made him master of Hansard, and enables him at any time to confute any opponent out of his own mouth; on the prospects of his party; on his recent advancement to office. He remembers that Mr. Perigord was a first-class man at Oxford; why should he despair, he asks himself, of attaining to the first place in the ministry? Why should not Mr. Perigord be one day sent for by her Majesty to form a Cabinet? And more and more vivid, and apparently within reach, became these dissolving views of his own promotion. So deeply was he immersed in them, that he heard

great aversion to such a childish flow of animal spirits. I think them very much in the way. I should recommend your giving them more unrestricted play at Pendlebury, if you cannot restrain them here."

Mrs. Perigord, the moment the blow had been struck, had hastened to her little favourite, and snatching it up in her arms,

"O George, dear!" she exclaimed, in a gently deprecatory tone of voice, "how could you do so?"

The poor unoffending little brute turned its grateful face up towards its mistress's, subdued its cries of

"And I have not received even a line from him!" gentleman to his domestic, not noticing his mothershe continued. in-law's impatience, "these to Mrs. Perigord, and take these to my library."

'Very well, if you wish it, George dear; but I Sumner, regarding her daughter with a look of agony. am very sorry, for poor Laura's sake."