did it in the purest spirit of simple-hearted civility. He had no notion of annoying her.

"Will you be afther putting a lather to the coach ?" quoth the Count in a more decided tone, and with an emphasis on the auxiliary that converted the request into a command.

The guard obeyed, hooked the steps on to the wheel, and Lucy Atherly descended in safety.

"You aint got no luggage have you, sir?" said the official.

Only that little bit of a carpet bag in the boot-the one without a handle," said the Count, going to look after his property, with an earnestness that a richer man might not have thought worth his while to expend upon an article so unimportant. Bundledoff, however, had a natural genius for forgetting himself and other things, and his setting the guard to search in the fore boot would have convinced of his friends that it was in the hind one.

any

The Count's natural anxiety about his little

property drew his attention away from his fellow passenger, he did not therefore observe that she needed his aid to protect her among the crowd of porters, cabmen, helpers, and hinderers; the nondescript loiterers of a large inn yard, who pounced upon her and her luggage, and who would seemingly have divided her into as many portions as they did the former, had she been as easily divisible.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as one may choose to think, she had not much luggage, and therefore she was soon stowed away in a cab, while the rest of the passengers were hurrying about the inn yard, and her more immediate companion, the Count, was clamouring for his carpet-bag.

In days of yore, when men so commonly used and abused horse flesh, when half a score of fine four-horse dashing vehicles were clattering upon the pebbles at once, an inn yard was an excellent place for a man to pick up crumbs of character. A place where conven

tional civilities were laid aside, and men came out in the old, honest, but somewhat heartless, maxim of "every man for himself," without much caring about the after clause of the axiom, or who was "for us all." In such a scene of selfishness men come out of their shells and show us what they are—hence it was an excellent place to study human nature, and we fear that when men have enough to think of their own concerns, few are found to spare a thought for those of their fellow creatures.

We fear too that our hero will hardly be set down among the honorable exceptions to this almost universal rule. We fear it, because he went away, and left Lucy Atherly to look after herself, while he looked after his carpet bag. And indeed as a hero, perhaps this would not be inconsistent, for your heroes, commonly so called, generally display their heroic qualities at the expense of mens' happiness, rather than the alleviation of mens' misery.

However, we would not have the reader judge too hastily, a thing we are all apt to do when thinking evil of our neighbour. We do not mean to call Count Bundledoff a faultless character-far from it, as the course of this veritable history will show, but we do say that if he went away, to mind his own matters instead of those of his fellow travellers, it was from want of thought, rather than want of feeling-an error of the head, not the heart.

When the Count had got his carpet bag, he was indeed somewhat surprised at the absence of his companion, and thought she might have stayed to say "good bye"-he was indeed in a slight state of confusion, owing to the hurry and turmoil which had so lately existed around him. True, it was not as we have hinted in the great days of coach travelling, there was but one stage instead of a dozen, but as far as our limited experience of men and things extends, we have invariably found that tumult and turmoil proceed in an inverse ratio with serious

importance-in short, that the less a man has to do, the more bustle he makes about it.

But the tumult was over-the passengers had passed away. The horses had been left to steam in the inn yard, and had overturned half a dozen empty pails, by poking their noses into them in search of water, as they severally found their way to the stable. The coach alone remained in the yard a powerless, lifeless thing, the very emblem of a body from which the vital energy had departed, yet the Count still lingered on the spot, buried in a brown study -looking as if he thought--as some natives of the United Kingdom might express it—“ What will I do next?"

From this state of absence of mind he was aroused by the head waiter, who approached, and offered his services.

"Where will I get a bed ?" said the Count. 66 Capital beds here, Sir-well-aired bedsneat wines-Barclay and Perkins entire-dinners drest on the shortest notice for large or