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came to spunge on me at breakfasttime? But surely it's no past a' possibility to be able to get our Johnny married to his daughter ?"

Mr Threeper was in no condition to listen to her; he saw the desperation of her case; he thought how she had gotten to the windward of him in the agreement, and he exclaimed, "To come on such a wildgoose chase to London, and this aunt in Virginia!"

"What did ye say?" cried Mrs Clatterpenny; mercy on us, what did ye say anent an aunt in Virginy? No possible, Mr Threeper. An aunt in Virginy! My stars, that's mooving."

Yes," said he, " and she may have had children, too."

Mrs Clatterpenny continued, " An auntie in Virginy with two children! what will become of us! Oh, but ye hae given me poor advice! An auntie in Virginy!-that 's the land where the tobacco grows; she will take snuff. I never thought they were wholesome that did. I came at the peril of my life, Mr Threeper; but did I think ye would tell me of an aunt in Virginy ?"

Mr Threeper, alarmed at her violence, replied, in a subdued tone, "You know, madam, that I am not to blame."

66 Then," cried she, with increasing fervency," how durst you discover this aunt in Virginy, with two children? Oh, man! oh, man! I thought you were skilled in the law --but an aunt in Virginy beats every thing. Mr Threeper, ye ought to be punished, yea, prosecuted to the utmost rigour of the law, for discovering this aunt in Virginy. What's the worth of your wig now? Oh ! oh! my heart is full an aunt in Virginy!"

With that she flounced out of the room, forgetful of all that was in it; but her son followed, and overtook her before she got into the street, for the lock of the street-door being a draw-bolt, her Scottish cunning could not discover the secret of that implement, and she was unable to let herself out. But when she was out, she made nimble heels, with a silent tongue, to her own lodgings; and in going across the Park, they fell in with Mr Shortridge, to whose care, as it was now near the hour to at

tend a lecture at the hospital, Dr Johnny consigned her, and hastened through the Horse Guards on his own affairs.

They reached her lodgings before they had any connected conversation. In speaking, however, of Miss Peabody, he expressed some doubt if she would have him; assigning for a reason, that she had some chance of getting a parcel of Highland rocks and heather.

Oh, Mr Shortridge, that's no a becoming speech-you're no better than a flea; who were ye biting behind their backs ?"

"To be plain with you," replied Mr Shortridge, "after coming so long with you without a civil word, your son was in my mind."

“Our Johnny !” cried she. “Mr Archibald Shortridge, junior""Well, madam."

"Your father was the Lord Provost of Glasgow"

Yes, Mrs Clatterpenny, and that was something."

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'Deed, it was," replied she," with his golden chain about his neck, his black velvet cloak and cocket hat. Oh but he was a pomp, and therefore I'll never deny ye're without a share of pedigree; but, Mr Archibald Shortridge, junior".

The young man replied tartly, "what do you want ?"

"Oh, nothing particular," said she, "but only just to make an observe -the which is, that there is a preternatural difference between our Johnny and the likes of you; for although I had my superior education in the Lowlands, his great-grandfather was a chieftain, wi' bonnet and kilt, and eagle's feather, his piper proudly marching before him, and his tail behind, when yours, Mr Archibald Shortridge, junior, was keeping a shop, and wearing breeches. So take your change out of that, Mr Archibald Shortridge, junior;"-and she, without any apology for leaving him, mounted to her own room.

Shortridge did not, however, remain long behind her; he also walked away, equally astonished at her behaviour, and unable to account for it, for he was as yet uninformed of the secret which M'Gab had disclosed, and only knew that Dr Johnny was the old lady's son and heir; that she was, by all accounts, the proper

heiress of the Ardenlochie estate, and had concluded by some process of thought, that it would not be difficult to fix, therefore, Miss Octavia's affections upon him. He was the more convinced of this, as she had received him but coolly when introduced to her, and that her father did not think the son of the Lord Provost of Glasgow quite so important as he had expected But the anger, the sullenness, and the crisp temper of Mrs Clatterpenny, seemed to him inexplicable: her whole conduct to

wards him was of the most perplexing kind. However, he went leisurely through the Horse Guards, across the Parade, towards Spring Gardens, to which he had learnt the Peabodys had removed; and in going to call on them he walked thoughtfully along. But opposite the gun, in the Park, he run against the old Squire himself, before he was recognised; and before he had well recovered from this encounter, the Squire said to him-But we shall give their conversation in the next Chapter.

CROCODILE ISLAND.

My favourite inn at Oxford was the Golden Cross. The Angel was admirable in its way; the Star celestial, and the Mitre fit for an archbishop, but the snug room on the left of the inner court of the Golden Cross was superior to them all. There seemed to be more comfort there than in the gaudier apartments of its rivals, and the company one met with was generally more in clined to be social. About eight o'clock in the evening was "the witching time o' night," for at that hour the multitudinous coaches from the North poured in their hungry passengers to a plentiful hot supper. In these hurried refections I invariably joined. Half an hour very often sufficed to give me glimpses of good fellows whom it only required time to ripen into friends. Many strange mortals I saw, who furnished me with materials for thinking till the next evening; and sometimes I have been rewarded for the wing of a fowl by a glance from a pair of beautiful bright eyes, which knocked all the classics, and even Aldrich's Logic, out of my head for a week. Three coaches, I think, met at the Golden Cross. There was very little time for ceremony; the passengers made the best use of the short period allowed them, and devoted more attention to the viands before them than to the courtesies of polished life. I made myself generally useful as a carver, and did the honours of the table in the best manner I could. One night I was waiting impatiently for the arrival of the coaches, and wondering what sort of company

I

they would present to me, when a young man came into the room, and sat down at a small table before the fire, who immediately excited my curiosity. He called for sandwiches, and rum and water, and interrupted his active labours in swallowing them only by deep and often-repeated sighs. He was tall, and strikingly handsome. I should have guessed him to be little more than one or two and twenty, had it not been for a fixedness about the brow and eyes which we seldom meet with at so early a time of life. I was anxious to enter into conversation with him; for, as I have said, I was greatly interested by his appearance. thought I knew the faces of all the University; and I was certain I had never met with him before. He had not the general appearance of a gownsman; he was tastefully and plainly dressed; obviously in very low spirits; and finished his second tumbler in the twinkling of a bedpost. As the third was laid down before him, I had just given the preliminary cough with which a stranger usually commences a conversation, when a rush was made into the room by the occupants of all the three coaches, and the Babel and confusion they created prevented me from executing my intention. On that occasion I did not join the party at the supper-table. I maintained my position at the corner of the chim ney, very near the seat occupied by the youth who had so strongly excited my attention. The company was more than usually numerous; and a gentleman, closely muffled up,

finding no room at the principal board, took his station at the same table with the stranger. The intruder threw off one or two cloaks and greatcoats, and untied an immense profusion of comforters and shawls, revealing the very commonplace countenance of a fat burly man about fifty years of age, with great staring blue eyes, and a lank flaxen wig of the lightest colour I had ever seen. This personage gave his orders to the waiter in a very imperious tone, to bring him a plate of cold beef, and a quart of brown stout, and exhibited various signs of impatience while his commands were executed.

"Cold night, sir," he said, at length addressing the youth. "I've travelled all the way from Manchester, and feel now as hungry as a hunter."

"It takes a man a long time to die of starvation," replied the other. "Men have been known to subsist for ten days without tasting food."

"Thank God, that has never been my case. I would not abstain from food ten minutes longer to save my father from being hanged.-Make haste, waiter!"

The young man shook his head, and threw such an expression of perfect misery into his handsome features, that his companion was struck with it.

"I'm afraid," he said, "you are unhappy, in spite of being so young. You haven't wanted meat so long yourself, I hope.-Waiter, what the devil's keeping you with that 'ere beef?"

"Worse, worse," replied the other, in a hollow voice. "Youth is no preventive against care, or crime, or misery, or-murder!"

He added the last word with such a peculiar intonation, that the traveller started, and laid down his knife and fork, which he had that moment taken possession of, and gazed at him as if he were anxious to make out his meaning.

"Don't judge of me harshly," continued the youth; "but listen to me, I beseech you, only for a moment, and you will confer a great obligation on a fellow-creature, and prevent misery of which you can have no conception."

The man thus addressed remained

motionless with surprise. He never lifted his eyes from the deeply melancholy countenance of the narrator; and I must confess I listened with no little earnestness to the disclosure he made myself.

"At sixteen years of age," he said, "I found myself a denizen of the wilds. Shaded from the summer heats, by magnificent oaks of the primeval forest, where I lived; and secured from the winter's cold, by skins of the tiger and lynx, I had not a desire ungratified. Groves of orange-trees spread themselves for hundreds of miles along our river: cocoa-nuts, and all the profusion of fruits and flowers with which the Great Spirit saw fit to beautify the original paradise of man, supplied every want. The eaglet's feather in my hair, the embroidery of my wampum belt, pointed out to my followers where their obedience was to be rendered; and I felt myself prouder of their unhesitating submission, and the love with which they regarded me, than that the blood of a hundred kings flowed in my veins. I was Chief of the Chactaws and Muscogulges. My mother was of European origin: her grandfather had visited the then thinly populated regions of North America, in company with several hundred bold and heroic spirits like himself, whose aspirations for the independence and equality of man, had carried them beyond the dull cold letter of the law. His name yet survives in Tipperary; his boldness was the theme of song; and the twelve dastard mechanics, who, at the bidding of a judge, consented to deprive their country of its ornament and hero, and to banish him, with all the nobility of his nature fresh upon him, were stigmatized as traitors to the cause of freedom. In spite, however, of their cowardice and meanness, they could not resist displaying the veneration in which they held him, by entwining his wrists with massive belts; and even around his legs they suspended majestic iron chains, which rattled with surpassing grandeur whenever he moved. He had not been long in the new land to which his merits had thus transferred him, when his name became as illustrious in it as it had been in his own. The name of O'Flaherty is still, I under

stand, a word of fear to the sleepyeyed burghers of the law-oppressed towns. But his course was as short as it was glorious. In leading a midnight attack on the storehouse of some tyrannizing merchant, he was shot in the act of breaking open a box which contained a vast quantity of coin. He fell and though he lived for several weeks, he kept his teeth close upon the residence of his followers. He died, as a hero should die, calm, collected, fearless. Even when the cord with which they had doomed him to perish was folded round his neck, he disdained to purchase an extension of his life by treachery to his friends. "An O'Flaherty," he said, (c can die-but he never peaches." He left a son who was worthy of his father's fame. Like him he was inspired with an indomitable hatred of tyranny and restraint; with noble and elevating desire to bring back those golden days, when all things were in common-when man, standing in the dignity of his original nature, took to himself whatever pleased his fancy, and owed no allegiance to the debasing influence of the law. From this noble stock my mother was descended; and when her beauty and the heroism of her character had raised her to be the consort of the Forest King, she seemed to feel that she was just in the situation for which she was destined by her nature. The pride of ancestry, and the remembrance of the glorious achievements which had rendered the names of her forefathers illustrious, beamed from her eye, and imprinted a majesty upon her brow, which we seek for in vain in females of inglorious birth. Attakul-kulla, which, in the puerile language of the whites, means the Little Carpenter, was my father's name. On his head, when going forth to battle, he wore a paper cap of the most warlike form, surrounded with miniature saws, and surmounted with a golden gimlet. When I was born, the infinite nations, and kindreds, and tongues which confessed his sway, made every demonstration of satisfaction. The

Muscogulges, the Simmoles, the Cherokees, the Chactaws, and all the other powerful tribes which bordered on the stately Alatamaha, sent deputies to the royal residence to congratulate their monarch on so auspicious an occasion. But, alas! this universal rejoicing was soon turned into mourning. Amongst those who came as ambassadors from the neighbouring powers was Sisquo Dumfki, the rat-catcher, from a kingdom on the banks of the majestic Mississippi. This man was the most celebrated drinker of his na tion. The strongest casine* seemed to have no more effect upon his senses than the purest water. At all feasts and solemn entertainments he was the champion of the Chicasaws. His fame was not unknown to the leaders of our tribe. My royal father burned with a passionate thirst for glory-and also for casine. In the happiness of my birth he challenged Sisquo Dumfki to a trial of their strength of stomach. For five days and nights they sat unceasingly swallowing the delicious fluid-five days and nights the calumet sent forth its smoke-never for one moment being lifted from the lips, save to make room for the cocoa-nut shell in which they drank their casine. Sleep at last seemed to weigh heavily on the lids of my royal father,

he was longer in the intervals of applying the goblet to his mouth,— and at last his hand refused its office his head sank upon his shoulder; and his generous competitor, satisfied with the victory he had gained, covered the imperial person with a robe of leopard skin, and left him to his repose. Repose! it was indeed his last repose-he opened his eyes but once-groaned heavily then shouting' Give me casine in pailfuls,'-for the ruling passion was strong to the latest hour -he became immoderately sick, and expired. I am afraid to state how much had been drank in this prodigious contest; but it was said by the court flatterers on the occasion, that they had consumed as much liquid as would have supplied a navigable canal from lake Ouaquaphe

* Casine, a sort of usquebaugh in great request among the Indians-and a very good tipple in its way.-Experto crede.

nogan to Talahasochte! I was an orphan; and though the death of my father had now raised me to a throne, I was bound by the customs of our nation to revenge it. In this feeling I was bred; I was allowed even from my infancy to drink nothing weaker than casine; my victuals were all seasoned with the strongest rum, so that by the time I was sixteen years of age, my head was so accustomed to the influence of spirituous liquors, that they were harmless to me as milk. Sisquo Dumfki was still alive, and still remained the unrivalled hero of his tribe. His death was decreed by my mother the very hour my father died; for this purpose she imbued my infant mind with unmitigated hatred of the murderer, as she called him, of my father, and taught me the happiness and glory of revenge. She talked to me of attaining her object by the hatchet and tomahawk, doubting perhaps that in spite of the training I had received, I should still be vanquished by the superhuman capacity of the rat-catcher; but I was confident in my own strength, and sending a trusty messenger to the encampment of the Chicasaws, I invited him to a solemn feast, and challenged him to a trial of strength. He came. You may imagine, sir, to yourself the feelings which agitated my bosom, when in my very presence, on the spot which was the scene of his triumph, I saw the perpetrator of a father's murder. Such, at least, was the light in which I had been taught, since the hour I was first suspended on the aromatic boughs of the magnolia, to regard the proud, the generous, the lofty Sisquo Dumfki. How ill founded was my hatred of that noble individual, you will discover in the sequel of my story.

"On this occasion he did not come alone. At his side, as he stood humbly before me, and paid his compliments to the queen, my mother, I marked with palpitating heart and flushing cheek, the most beautiful young girl I had ever seen. Her limbs, unconcealed by the foolish drapery in which the European damsels endeavour to hide their inferiority, were like polished marble, so smooth and round and beautifully shaped. Round her middle she wore

a light bandage, embroidered with the feathers of the eagle, and this was the sole garment she had on, save that her head was ornamented with a beautiful diadem of heron's plumes. She was so young, so artless, and so ravishingly beautiful, that she took my heart captive at the first glance. I had at that time only twelve wives, selected by the regent from my own peculiar tribe, but several other nations had for some time been importuning me to choose a score or two of consorts from the loveliest of their maidens, and I had for some reason or other delayed complying with their requests. But now I was resolved to marry the whole nation, so as to secure this most beautiful of her sex. Alas! was it not madness thus to give way to these tender emotions, when the first word she uttered conveyed to me the appalling certainty that she was daughter of my deadliest foe-of the very being whom it had been the sole object of my education to enable me to drink to death! But a second look at the enchanting girl made me forgetful of every feeling of revenge. I spoke to her I found her soft, sweet, delightful,-a daughter of the pathless forest,-stately as the loftiest palms that waved their plumed heads in grandeur to the sky, and pure as the spiral ophrys, with its snow-white flowers, which blossoms so tenderly at their feet. Her name was Nemrooma, which in your language means the spotless lily-mine, I must inform you, was Quinmolla, the drinker of rum."

Here the youngman paused, and sighed deeply. I confess I was intensely interested by the manner in which he related his story; the traveller to whom he addressed himself, was apparently fascinated by the wild beauty of his eyes; for the beef still lay untasted before him, and he could not remove his looks, even for a moment, from the countenance of the Indian king." The feast was at last prepared," he continued, " and Sisquo Dumfki and myself were placed in conspicuous situations, but still far enough removed from the spectators to have our conversation private. We drank, and every time the casine hogshead was replenished, the lovely Nem

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