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younger brothers, labouring under domestic felicity dining out three or four days in the week; while on the off-days, the husband fared sumptuously at his club, and the wife contented herself with a solitary chicken.

The split between John Woolston and his fellow-creatures, meanwhile, was becoming wider and wider. The influence of a contracted purse infected his whole nature, and he was growing narrow-minded and morose. The character of his wife remained undeteriorated, for, a stranger to luxury, a little discomfort was amply compensated by her happiness as a wife and mother; and anxiety for her sick boy excluded all meaner cares. To accompany her children in their daily stroll on the sands, and indite to their father a bulletin of their health, was recreation enough for Maria; and that her bonnet was shabby, or her mutton chop tough and smoky, passed unobserved.

But it was not so with her husband. He missed his cheerful club-his stall at the opera

-his Epsom and Ascot

prime sherry and fruity claret; and was already beginning to fancy this work-a-day world a far less pleasant place than of yore.

There was but one of its inhabitants, however, to whom he felt disposed to confide his disappointment, the far-famed Roger Farmer, of whom he had been the favourite pupil; a man who, having amassed in his profession a noble fortune, had exhibited the rare disinterestedness of declining one of the highest and most lucrative honours of the law.

But at the period of his marriage, Farmer, himself the type of celibacy, had assumed the privilege conveyed by nearly a score of years' seniority, to assure him, in the plainest English, that the best of marriages was a risk; and one of doubtful advantage, an act of insanity. So far from accepting scruples of conscience as a justification of his folly, the old bachelor pleaded as earnestly as if he had been defending a case of breach of promise of marriage, that to honour

Within half-an-hour, the gaunt figure of Roger Farmer, not a whit or an hour the worse for the four intervening years, was deposited in Woolston's thread-bare arm-chair; entering into the details of the impending cause with a searching acuteness of intellect which imparted instantaneous light to all that was previously obscure. After diving into the vast ocean of his memory, the man learned in the law brought up the pearl. No one who listened to Farmer's perspicuous interpretation could dream of an appeal.

While business was discussed between them, not so much as the wink of an eyelash did the elder lawyer vouchsafe to any extraneous object. The dusty, disorderly room, so little in accordance with his pupil's former habits, was nonexistent to him. He saw nothing of the scattered papers, the mouldy inkstand, the cindery grate, the broken blind, or the ragged hearth rug. But when the last word was said and the last note taken, in re Rothley versus Barnstable,

he suddenly observed, "Your father, I am sorry to find, has not come round, Woolston ?Where are your wife and children? You have never brought them to see me.”—

In a moment, the stream gushed from the rock.

Unasked, John Woolston proceeded to repeat all his grievances; and poor Farmer, after buttoning up his coat, sat and listened, as resignedly as though the fire were not out and the afternoon more than chilly.

"The old story, the old story !" muttered he, when the plaintiff had said his say, at least, twice over. "After giving the utmost offence, where you owed implicit obedience, you have made no overtures for reconciliation. I don't wonder to find you on such bad terms with yourself, after such a succession of blunders. But come and dine with me, to-day, John; and let us talk over old times, and try to patch up the future. I should like to be able to send good news of you to a kinsman of yours, with whom I made acquaintance, last autumn, at

Liverpool, (while treating with him for the purchase of some Cheshire farms); - the quaintest old fellow I ever met;-but worth his weight in diamond dust."

"One of the Wraysburys, of course. My mother was a Liverpool woman ;-indebted to a counting-house for her fifty thousand pounds.”

"A fact which both her ladyship and your father appear to have forgotten. My queer acquaintance, old Adam Wraysbury, informed me that, from the day of his marriage, Sir Harry had sent his wife's family to Coventry; and that Harrals might lie in Mesopotamia, for anything he knew or cared."

But how came he to mention us at all, to a perfect stranger ?"

"Because, in the room where we were examining our title-deeds, there hung, among a tolerable collection of pictures, the portrait of a youth, by Kneller, bearing so singular a resemblance to yourself, that I was forced to apologise to the old gentleman for the interest it excited,