from the premises, and the gardener's wife insisted that they had been purloined; Mrs. Tabitha, on the contrary, charged the losses upon the carelessness of the gardener's family. It naturally happened, therefore, that this evening, upon hearing the steps of the two lovers repeatedly passing on the gravel walk beneath her window, the gardener's wife should be on the alert. Here, no doubt, were the robbers. She dressed herself, slipped down stairs, unlocked the door, and leaving it open to secure her own retreat in case of need, but carrying the key with her to provide against the worse case of the enemy's intercepting her, and throwing a detachment into the fortress, she placed herself in ambuscade amongst the bushes. No long time elapsed before two people were heard advancing: who they were the good woman could not make out from the deep shades of the shrubs, but she observed that they talked in low tones. The few words she caught were, "Sure that it is at the gardener's; ""Easily take it away;"Think it will be possible to raise the window without being heard?" Ay, thought the gardener's wife, here are the robbers, and they are now planning a burglary. She watched them into her own house, silently crept after them, locked the door, and with the key in her pocket went off to alarm Mr. Mule's family, to proclaim the capture of the robbers, and to rear a lasting monument to her own courage and innocence the basis of Mrs. Tabitha's final confusion and mortification.

upon

Ah, well-a-day, poor Mr. Mule, I see another storm brewing against your peace. Just sinking again into slumber, with his head under the bed-clothes, Mr. Mule was entering upon a region of milder dreams. Happelius was vanishing, basilisks were growing scarce, when all at once the ghost of the giant Thor appeared to him playing with his sledge-hammer upon his chamber-door. In direful confusion he awoke, and too surely he found there was something in it. The dream was so far wrong that it was not the door which was played upon but the window. Whether Thor were the performer could not yet be ascertained; but certainly the clatter, which now assailed the glass of Mr. Mule's window, was quite worthy of Thor; and if not Thor, at least it might be said of the performer (according to the polite reply of the Frenchman to Dr. Moore in a different case), " Qu'il méritoit bien l'étre." Mr. Mule kept his position under the bed-clothes, and determined to keep it, let what would happen. Frequent meditation upon the case of nocturnal panics had satisfied him that the best position which could be taken up in such circumstances was to cower under the bed-clothes-the worst ghost he had yet met with had not gone the length of pulling off his blankets. Besides, it was clearly the place of honour: in bad times, as Mr. Addison correctly observes, "the post of honour

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is a private station;" and where is there one so private as that of a diver under the bed-clothes? Mr. Mule was well and scientifically tucked in upon three sides: as to the head, which certainly was the Achilles's heel of his position, he had done his best to complete the lines of circumvallation by screwing down the clothes with both hands, and by doubling them under the weight of his head, which, he trusted, might resist Thor's hammer as long as any part about him. On the whole, he felt himself entitled to say, that come would what come might, he positively would not be dislodged.

We shall see. Mr. Mule was positive, certainly; but the strongest positions have been forced, and the resolutions of the most restive persons have been baffled. At this moment he heard another storm driving at the windows, accompanied by shrill screams and feminine ululations. "God bless my soul," said Mr. Mule, "here are all the ghosts from the Red Sea; and now one finds what comes of shutting a window in a ghost's face.” Yes, the rationale of the assault was but too clear. Mule it was that had shut down the window which the ghosts had opened; he could not deny it; and Mule it is that must suffer for it. Bare poetical justice demanded that his window should be made the next object of attack. Mule saw all this, and Mule groaned; but Mule kept his position for all that. If he could get Mrs. Tabitha to take to the shutting down of the window, or to divide the blame with him, something might be done. But, lord! what's the use of deliberating when the enemy are at the gates? Even whilst he yet deliberated, another clattering storm assailed the window; another peal of feminine ululation ascended, the panes began to crash, something or other rattled along the floor in spite of all which, we are proud to state that Mr. Mule kept his position; and, lastly, something or other hit Mr. Mule in a region far more "practicable" than his head. If it was Thor's hammer-at least it appeared that Thor's hammer was no ghost; in consequence, Mule's resolution, however mulish, gave way. Upwards he soared like a barrel of gunpowder, or like the fiend when touched by Ithuriel's spear, or, according to our former comparison, like a rocket. At this moment Mule must have been a good study to the lovers of the picturesque, and still more at the next moment when he received a second rap over the shins. What passed in his mind during this ghostly agony it would be difficult even for Professor Kant to have assigned: thus much, however, is certain, that by the "association of ideas," as Miss Hamilton would still be saying, the "tangible idea" of his own shins (to speak with David Hartley) suggested the "audible idea" of the young malefactor, whom, upon a certain night in former years, he had heard giggling behind a wall at a certain

;

device for throwing Mr. Mule upon those shins. Hereafter, when Mule comes coolly to collate the two cases in point of torment, he will see the absurdity of having entered Mr. Ferdinand's villany into his black day-book, with a Latin notula annexed, implying that Furcifer iste Ferdinandus Lawler was a greater plague to him than the fiend and all his imps ever had been or would be. The result shewed how wrong he was. Mr. Ferdinand's assaults upon his shins left Mr. Mule courage enough to rise and run after him, and at one time really with some chance of overtaking him, and bringing him to condign punishment; whereas at present, after sky-rocketing, he immediately collapsed upon the centre of the bed,—and lay in a sort of round heap (rudis indigestaque moles), without a thought of avenging his shins. So lying, however, and now totally denuded of all bed-clothes, he heard the better; and it struck him in the next course of ululations, that he distinguished the voice of his own gardener's wife; "Beyond a doubt," said he, " it is Nelly Hagedorn ;" and the very next moment brought to his ears the cry of "Thieves! Thieves!"

"Thieves!" said Mr. Mule exultingly, "God be praised! Thieves are better than ghosts any how." And he rose with alacrity again he grew "spuriously courageous," according to the Stagyrite; for he was in an immense passion. And now, indeed, there was some ground for a parallel between his present mood and that in which he had pursued the young malefactor: the same passion possessed him-vengeance; and for the same wrongs-violated shins. He strode to the window, and roundly charged Nelly Hagedorn with burglarious attempts on his house, and murderous attempts on himself; all which, however, ranked lower in the scale of guilt than another offence, which he was obliged to suppress, of having swindled him into unutterable panic by personating a ghost from the Red Sea. Nelly defended herself on the charges of burglary and murder, by stating the case; she had the thieves under lock and key; they might break prison; she had done what she could to rouse the family by "audible ideas:" those failing, what remained but "tangible ideas?" And what mattered a few panes of glass in comparison of liberating the premises from nightly intrusions of thieves?

There was something certainly in this statement: these thieves might be the very people who had opened Mrs. Tabitha's window; in which case, three sets of ghosts would have evanesced (or rather consolidated) into a rose-tree, Nelly Hagedorn, and a couple of thieves. Mr. Mule was mollified; roused his household; and went down stairs to admit Mrs. Hagedorn.

VII. MORE THIEVES AND MORE GHOSTS.

All the world was below stairs; for half the neighbourhood had been roused by Mrs. Hagedorn's outcries: amongst them, by the way, was slippery Dick; which is very well, as we shall want him for the catastrophe; and we desire that he will not leave the premises till that is effected. Though Dick, however, and other extra persons were there, one essential limb of the family was not : in the general muster every body perceived that Miss Fanny was

absent.

"Fanny, my love!" cried Mr. Mule, all the way up stairs to her bed-room:Fan, Fan, my love!" But no "Fan, Fan," answered. He advanced to her bed, and gazed upon it with horror: no soft swelling or fine undulations of the bed-clothes expressed the beautiful outlines of a young woman's person: no quiet heaving betrayed the corresponding breathings of Miss Fanny, or the gentle pulsations of Miss Fanny's heart. Miss Fanny was gone. But when, and whither, and how? If thieves had opened the window, thieves could hardly have stolen Miss Fanny. No: there was something in it more than all that. Mr. Mule was alone, and Mr. Mule again began to quake. The rose-tree, the thieves, and even Nelly Hagedorn, all became apocryphal in his eyes; and it seemed to him that there was nothing certain under the sun, but his own shins and other people's ghosts.

Down stairs he posted, and stated the facts. All present were alarmed, except Mrs. Tabitha, who contemplated the case exclusively in relation to virtue; and, as her virtue was chiefly manufactured by Cant and Co., from extra superfine particular humbug, Miss Fanny's character was likely to suffer some damage in her hands. But Mr. Mule saw this, and hastily took it out of them he called her an old cat: swore that he had done wrong to torment his niece by putting her under such a duenna: if Fanny had gone off voluntarily, no doubt it was to drown herself; in which case they would be both haunted by her ghost; and justly, as he must acknowledge. However he would take his horse and ride all over the country in search of her.

So saying he mounted up stairs to equip himself, whilst most of the others accompanied Mrs. Nelly to the spectacle of the little gaol delivery which she promised.

"Now we shall see," cried Mrs. Nelly, triumphantly, as she unlocked the door, "whether my warnings are always to be set at nought." So saying, she threw the door open with the air of one who is exposing to the public some great exhibition of lions: the company, however, were so ceremonious, that none chose to

claim precedency of entrance. At length, however, Hermes Trismigistus, as the person who might be supposed most familiar with the genus Thief,' stepped forward and held up a light to examine the two specimens of that genus so recently caught. "But how is this, Mrs. Nelly? The birds are flown: the cage is empty. Or rather had there ever been any birds ?" This was the second question; and, after a fruitless search, it was decided in the negative. It passed, nem. con. that Mrs. Nelly Hagedorn had been guilty of a hoax-of a hum—of a flam: the whole was too palpably a Mississippi scheme for raising credit; a pure swindling South Sea bubble. And a doubt was moved by Slippery Dick, whether it were not actionable to disappoint people's curiosity in this shocking way: nay, some held it to be a sort of petty treason to excite the passions of the public, and then baulk them; since every individual in respect to the collective body of the public stands in some such relative of fealty as a wife to a husband, or a servant to his master.

What then had become of the poor prisoners? Had Jove, in compassion to their misfortunes, taken them aloft and made them into some new constellation for the encouragement of future lovers, and the confusion of the present, Mr. Pond?-No: the case was this:-Mr. Ferdinand had been too much engaged in war to have much faith in the absolute impregnability of any fortress, the gardener's cottage, he was satisfied, must have its weak points, as well as Gibraltar and Bergen-op-zoom; and wherever an enemy could break in, it was clear that a prisoner might break out. Such a place he found in a little back-window; it was strengthened, indeed, by an apricot tree, which had been trained over it upon an espalier: but a saw, which lay in the window-seat, enabled him to prune a neat quadrangular section out of the espalier, through which he first elaborated his own person; next some unworthy ladder which had been the means of seducing them into the enemy's quarters; and, finally, Miss Fanny. Like Nisus and Euryalus, they were just returning from their night adventure, and, like Nisus and Euryalus, with the spoils of the enemy's camp; when suddenly, like Nisus and Euryalus, they heard the enemy advancing directly in their path; and, therefore, like Nisus and Euryalus, they plunged into a gloomy thicket to avoid them.-Here, by the way, an absurd friend of ours, (an attorney,) who is now looking over our shoulder, objects that this comparison is defeated' and avoided' (as he calls it in his law jargon), by the sex of one of the parties. The party' he means is Miss Fanny, whom he pretends that we must not liken to Euryalus. "Nisus", says he, "may do very well for the cornet, but who the d-l is to do for Miss Fanny? She is a young lady,-whereas Euryalus is a young gentleman."

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