against the doorpost with all the ferocity of a rage which could find no excuse for other display. So Dick was beginning an argument in favour of his being a very proper person for any lady to elope with, when Matilda murmured in a voice, broken with the depth and strength of her emotions, "You have a friend who was with you yesterday; emboldened by his presence I might dare to trust myself."

"Oh, if that is all, the matter's settled," said Dick, taking the young lady's hand, as if to clench the bargain.

In another moment Hilton turned round, as if suddenly recollecting that he had left the fox and goose together; but he saw nothing to excite any one's suspicions. Dick was fumbling with his hat, and Matilda reclining languidly on her cushions. But on Matilda's finger sparkled unseen a ring which Dick used to protest was given him by an Indian princess, while he had in his possession one of the long silken ringlets which were wont to flow from beneath her simple close cap.

It was with a very mysterious and pompous air that Dick greeted Hope and myself an hour after, in what some imaginative person had called the street of the little village. Could any one have deciphered his looks they would have read, "You have nothing like an elopement on your hands." But he did not scruple to impart his secret to us "in the strictest confidence," and indeed he might have been certain that we had no desire to baulk his taste for an elopement.

A little before midnight a carriage drew up near the old farm-house, whence Doubleitt and Smith sneaked forth, looking as though just about to commit a burglary.

"All right?" inquired Dick, in a felonious tone of mystery.

"All right, sir,” replied the postilion, with bandit-like boldness.

But I know not that either Smith or Doubleitt would have thought all quite right, had they seen a man jump on the box as soon as they had jumped into the interior.

Off they set. It was a fine night, but no moon, and to Dick's imagination the stars seemed winking knowingly at the earth, as if enjoying what went on. So did he for a while; but then he began to think that the cottage of his fair one should be reached by this time. The mysterious light of the merry twinkling stars did not enable him to make very sure of the locality through which they were driving with a speed that seemed very much in earnest.

"Postilion!" shouted Dick, looking out of one window.

"Postilion!" roared Smith, thrusting his head out of the other. “Yes, sir; we'll be at the terminus in time," screamed the postilion without stopping.

"The terminus!" shrieked Dick in

waiting for me!"

agony:

" and my

Matilda is

"Stop, you scoundrel !" vociferated Smith.

With the despe

But the scoundrel urged his horse to a quicker pace. rate intent of jumping out, Dick tried the door, but it was fastened securely, and Smith's violent efforts only tended to a similar discovery on the other side. Instantly the two heads bolted out, furious with indignation at their bodies being bolted in, and roared like caged lions until they were as hoarse; while the carriage went on as though, like the enchanted leg, once set a-going nothing could stop it.

Our friends' voices, however, died away at last from want of breath,

and immediately they heard, "What's the matter?" from the roadside.

"Only two gentlemen going home tipsy from a dinner party, promptly replied some one on the box, and instantly the horses' speed redoubled.

"No, no! stop them, stop them!" screamed the prisoners as with one voice.

But a loud laugh from those they left, and one yet louder from him who sat in front, was all the satisfaction they received. In another moment there were lights seen, and dogs barking, and they were whirled into a country inn yard, at the very moment when Doubleitt, kicking out the carriage door, came flying through it like a sylph, catching sight of a police uniform in his descent.

"Take that fellow in charge," he cried, pointing to the postilion. "Take that fellow in charge," echoed Smith, flying after him, and pointing to the man on the box.

Fortunately for the irate gentlemen, there were two policemen, and in another instant there were as many prisoners, while half-a-dozen volunteer assistants, who had been occupied with a private carriage, crowded round in apparent readiness to execute any sort of Lynch law procedure on the culprits, the precise nature of whose crime was not very easily to be gathered from the multifarous accusations of our kidnapped friends.

"Take us to that room, there are gentlemen there," said the postilion emphatically, directing his captor's attention to windows from which, late as was the hour, lights were still streaming brilliantly.

"I don't care about gentlemen here or gentlemen there, but I'd like to make out what the charge was, before we haul them off to the stationhouse," said one policeman to the other.

66

'Oh, they'll make out or make up some charge, there's no fear of that," laughed the postilion recklessly, as they approached the door, a movement which the officials of the place had favoured on principle; for, like nature, they abhorred a vacuum in their domains, and had an irresistible impulse to fill it up. And in another moment mine host, who now made his appearance, ushered the whole party without an inquiry into his best room, where five or six of Smith and Doubleitt's acquantances sat enjoying the delights of a bowl of punch compounded by old Colonel Cunningham, the best composer of the sort I know of.

"Delighted to see you here!" exclaimed several voices.

"Then I am not delighted to see you, or any one else here," quoth Doubleitt; and it shall not be for long. There's a lady, I wont say who, has been waiting for me this hour past. But these two scoundrels"Come, don't be sulky, Dick," said the postilion coolly, taking off his hat, and tearing a scarf from his throat, which example was followed by his fellow prisoner. "You were resolved some one should be run away with to-night, and we would not have you disappointed."

"Disappointed!" echoed Dick, almost suffocated with passion, while Smith ejuculated, "Hope" and "Gerald," amid the laughter of the convivial party and mine host, all of whom had been prepared for some such incident.

"Disappointed!" repeated Dick, in a tone of the bitterest reproach, enough to harrow up the heart of any one who felt in fault." Was this friendly?" he said to Hope. "Was it like a man of honour," (this was

to me,) "to interfere with my interests at their most important crisis? You may laugh," (this address was to the "first class " spectators,) "but it is no laughing matter to me, to be carried miles over the country while a beautiful girl"

"Hang it, Doubleitt !" I interrupted, "don't be at your old jargon ; you were never able to say much about her beauty."

pur

"Then I can about her fortune, and that is much more to the pose," said he, irritated into losing all guard over his speech. "Fiveand-thirty thousand pounds, and a wife with one foot in the grave, are not to be picked up every day."

"No, indeed," assented Hope, the quondam postilion.

“And you have made me lose her," said Dick through his clenched teeth, and grinning like a tiger-cat. "But you shall answer to me for this conduct. Thirty-five thousand pounds left to go to that rascally guardian of hers."

"You need not be uneasy on his account, my dear fellow, for we have brought him with us," I replied, drawing some Rufus-looking face adornments from my pocket. “Just give me time to adjust these correctly, and you will have Mr. Hilton before you in propria persona." "And Matilda?" gasped Dick, beginning to have some inkling of the affair.

"Has just resolved into the immateriability whence she arose," said Hope, laughing. "Much obliged to you, my good fellow, but I don't mean you to be my heir, even if I had two feet in the grave. You are welcome to my ringlet, Dick; I don't miss it, as they were only bought for rare occasions; but here is the ring I obtained under false pretences, and so return. A little trifle you gave me, a few days before, I take the liberty of retaining, since I gave you full value for it in golden promises.

"What does all this mean?" demanded Smith, with an air of perplexity, which was not too anxious to embrace the probable solution of the mystery.

"Why," said Hope, in a peculiar tone, "I thought we had made it nearly as plain as your honour's face is in my eyes.'

It was not with a very good grace that our travelling companions joined in the laugh against themselves; for meum and tuum are very different things when the possession of a good round sum is in the case; and they had to own that we had fairly won the wager, whose completion old Colonel Cunningham's punch was brewed to celebrate. Yet to its merits Dick did such ample justice that before morning he was boasting as fluently as ever about heiresses and Indian princesses, whose brightest smiles had been lavished on him, and was only stopped by deafening shouts of laughter-whose cause he was too bewildered to comprehendmidway in full recital of how he had stormed the heart of the wealthy Matilda Roberts, told with as many embellishments and exaggerations as though Hope and I had never been guilty of conjuring her up into an ephemeral existence for the sake of winning our wager.

SEAT ON HORSEBACK.

BY HARRY HIEOVER.

On whatever occasion, wherever, or whenever we sit, the first desideratum is to sit comfortly and safely; the next is to sit gracefully-an act, simple as it is, in an ordinary chair, is still one that is not achieved by every one; in fact, I much fear there are at all times numberless persons who do not sit comfortably on their seats and in these times I believe there are very few who do. Nor is the richest damask silk the slightest guarantee of the ease of its occupier, more than a common wood or rush bottom; in fact, in such cases the bottom has little to do with the matter, but the mind has a great deal.

I make no doubt but thousands have a most uncomfortable seat on their horses from the same cause; and if in carriages, when this cause exists, the well-stuffed cushions of the state carriage no more procure ease than if they were stuffed, in coachmaker's phrase, with French hair, alias hay.

There can be no doubt of one thing, so far as riding is concerned ; good hands and a good seat are the first things to be studied by any one who intends becoming a horseman; in fact, till he gains both, he may sit on a horse and be conveyed along, but has very little more pretension to call himself a horseman than he would be authorised in calling himself a coachman because he was on the roof or any other seat about a coach: 'tis true, we see many such riding every day, and perhaps their proficiency in equitation is sufficient for their purpose; if so, so long as they stick to that one purpose it is all very well.

We will say there are, take them for general purposes, four different seats. A firm seat and its reverse, an ugly seat, and a graceful one; but in these so many changes may be rung that to describe them all would be impossible. We may see several men all riding with a different sort of seat, but all of them sitting well and firmly, but not gracefully; others sitting well and gracefully too, and it is quite possible for others to have a graceful and showy seat, but not a firm one.

Now there are seats that, be they good or bad of the sort, would lead one, conversant with such matters, to judge pretty accurately what sort of riding a man had been used to by that seat: just as we can detect the soldier, sailor, and dancer by their walk. I think I could make a good guess at a working tailor; he always shambles along as if he was afraid his shoes would come off before he could get housed, and parade his ten toes at opposite points of the compass; he then looks so perfectly at his ease, I always envy him. It is rather singular that no mode has been struck out to enable them to hatch eggs; they could, on an average, bring out seventeen broods every year.

We will now look to the different seats daily in use in our own country, the marked characteristics of which are shown by the following artists in their different capacities. The jockey, the exercise-riding lad, the

huntsman, the whipper-in, the groom, the postboy, the soldier, the dealer's lad, and the butcher. These have all different seats on horseback, each best adapted to their several occupations; for though a man may have a good general seat and style of riding altogether that will enable him to ride fairly, or even well in any way, excepting the direct military cut, still the man who all his life is accustomed to one particular style of riding and to one particular kind of horse, will feel more at home in his own business than a man less used to it.

It cannot, of course, be supposed that though the different persons I have enumerated are all kept to their own particular mode of riding, that they all excel in it, or even ride well. They ride from the force of habit and daily practice better in their own way than in any other; but there are many men who ride all their lives and never can be made ride well in any way. This is almost sure to be the case where a man feels neither pride nor pleasure in becoming a horseman: such a man, from taking no pleasure in his horse or riding, never learns the very wide difference between being carried by a pleasant-going animal or a brute. Many a sturdy fellow with a strong brawny arm would prefer a beast that bores at him: it gives him a purchase, which is desirable to one who never liked riding well enough to get a neat independent seat. There are hundreds of men who really could not ride a nice lightmouthed horse.

To instance: who has not seen many different farmers' men sent on an errand on horseback, probably on "master's nag?" Those who have, have seen them, one and all, riding precisely in the same way, namely, their stirrups very short, with their toes only in them, the bridle-hand very far advanced, lugging at the horse's mouth, no matter where or how he carries his head, and in the fullest swing trot they can get him into, rising in their stirrups with undulations as great, and with a force nearly as great, but by no means as regular, as the pistons of a steam-engine. If the horse is a safe, careful goer, with feet of cast-iron, or a substance equal to it, they get safe to their journey's end; if, on the contrary, from a rolling stone or any other cause the horse makes a false step, of course down they go. If Giles comes upon his head he is all right; but the nag's knees being of softer stuff he has to be taken to the village horse-doctor, "a mortal cute man, surely," who, of course, puts on plenty of his universal hot oils, compounded of euphorbium, with the addition of other equally mild little excoriating articles to render the certainty of an extensive blemish complete. When healed, the liberal judgment of the neighbours infers that the larger the scar"in coorse" the larger must have been the original wound; and it is set down that no one but this wonderful man would, or rather could, have healed it at all; the more so, as all the "joint oil" had been let out a favourite idea with country practitioners-to make amends for which, they let their own oils in. To be sure, the animal does go with a stiffened joint; this might be expected as another matter "in coorse," from there being no "joint oil;" inflammation from strong stimulants, instead of fomentations, had nothing to do with it. It was a wonderful cure, sure-ly.

In justice to the simple country shoeing-smith, let us not confound him with the "wonderful men" who style themselves "horse doctors ;" the title of veterinary surgeon they do not assume, (that is, the veritable village horse-doctors do not,)-not from any superabundant modesty on