that the scaffold was falling. The crowd fell back in terror, while the men upon the scaffolding, not knowing in what quarter the danger existed, stood in terrified groups, or madly rushed to the ladders to escape. The mad shouts and screams of those beneath added to the confusion, and rendered it impossible to convey warning to those in peril. At this instant a man was seen approaching the weak part of the scaffold, and though at every step he took, the ill-fated pole swerved farther and farther from the right line, he was utterly unconscious of his danger, and seemed only bent on gaining a rope, which, fastened by one end above, hung down to the porch beneath. Wild cries and yells were raised to warn him of his peril, but not heeding, nor, perhaps, hearing them, he seized the cord and swung himself free of the scaffold.

In an instant the fabric gave way, and, bending over, came down with a terrible crash of falling beams and splintered timber. It fell so close to where I stood, that it struck down an old man with whom I had been conversing the moment before. Strangely too, amidst that dense throng, this was the only serious injury inflicted; but he was struck dead — at least, he only lingered for the few minutes it took to carry him to a neighbouring publichouse, where he expired.

"It's old Harry; he always said he'd die at his crossing," said the publican, as he recognised the features.

"He thought it was them newfashioned curricles would do for him, though," said another. "He said so to me last week, for he was getting too old to escape when he saw them coming."

"Old! I should think he was. He was on that there crossing at the coronation-a matter of fifty years ago."

"Say forty, my good friend, and you'll be nigher the mark; but even forty sufficed to leave him well off for the rest of his days, if he had but had prudence to know it."

As I stood thus listening, I leaned upon the broom which I had taken from the old man's hand when I lifted

shillings a-week. Do you say done?” Before I could collect myself to understand what this offer might mean, a dozen others were crowding around me with a number of similar proposals.

"You don't know the rule amongst these fellows," said the landlord, addressing me; "but it is this, that whoever touches the broom first after its owner is killed, succeeds to the crossing. It's yours now, to work or dispose of, as you like best."

"He'll never work it- he doesn't know the town," said one.

"He'd not know Charley Fox from Big Hullescoat the tailor."

"He'd splash Colonel Hanyer, and sweep clean for the Duke of Queensbury."

"And forget to have change for Lord Bute," cried another—a sally so generally applauded, that it showed a full appreciation of its truthfulness.

"I'll try it, nevertheless, gentlemen," said I, addressing the company respectfully; and if the landlord will only give me credit for half-aguinea's worth of liquor, we'll drink my accession to office at once."

This was agreeably received by all, even the landlord, who ushered us into an inner room to enjoy ourselves.

If I had not transgressed too freely already on my readers' patience by details which have no immediate bearing on my own life, I should have been greatly tempted to revive some recollections of that evening, one of the strangest I ever passed. Assuredly the guild of which I suddenly found myself a member was not one in which I could have either expected laws and regulations, or looked for anything like a rigid etiquette; yet such was precisely the case. The rules, if not many, were imperative, while the requirements to obtain success were considerable. It was not enough to know every remarkable character about town, but you should also have a knowledge of their tone and temper. Some should be dunned with importunity; others never asked for a farthing; a Scotch accent went far with General Dundas; a jest never failed with Mr. Sheridan. Besides this, an unfailing memory for every one who had crossed during the day was indispensable, and if this gift extended to chairs and coaches, all the better was it.

My brethren, I must do them the justice to say, were no niggards of in

formation. To me, perhaps, they felt a sense of exultation in describing the dignity of the craft-perhaps they hoped to deter me from a career so surrounded with difficulties. They little knew that they were only stimulating the curiosity of one to whom any object or any direction in life was a boon and a blessing. Hardship and neglect had so far altered my appearance, that, even had I cared for it, any artificial disguisement was unnecessary. My beard and mustache covered the lower part of my face, and my hair, long and lank, hung heavily on my neck behind. But, were it otherwise, how few had ever known me! There were none to blush for me - none to feel implicated in what they might have called the disgrace of my position. I reasoned thus-I went even farther, and persuaded myself there was something akin to heroism in thus braving the current of opinion, and stemming the strong tide of the world's prejudice. If this be my fitting station in life, thought I, there is no impropriety in my abiding by it; and if, perchance, I might have worthily filled a higher one, the disgrace is not with me, but with that world that treated me so harshly.

Though all these arguments satisfied me thoroughly, as I thought over them, they did not give me the support I had hoped for. When the hour came for me to assume my calling, I am almost ashamed to say how I shrunk from it. I grieve to think how much more easy for me had it been to commit a crime, than to go forth, broom in hand, and earn my livelihood! But I was determined to go on, and I did so. The first week or so was absolute misery; I scarcely dared to look any one in the face. If, perchance, I caught an eye fixed upon me, I imagined I was recognised. I dreaded to utter a word, lest my voice might betray me.

I was repeatedly questioned about old Harry, and what had become of him; and I could see, that with all my attempts at disguise, my accent attracted attention, and men looked at me with curiosity, and even suspicion. Is it not strange that there should be more real awkwardness in maintaining a station that one deems below him, than in the assumption of a rank as unquestionably above his own? Perhaps our self-love is the cause of it, and that in our estimate of our own

natures, we think nothing too great or too exalted for us!

Be this as it may, my struggles were very painful; and, far from conforming easily to the exigencies of my lot, each day's experience rendered them still harder to me. Two entire days passed over without my having received a farthing. I could not bring myself to ask for payment, and the crowd passed on, unheeding me. Some who seemed prepared with the accustomed mite replaced it in their pockets, when they saw what seemed my indifference. One young fellow threw me a penny as he went, but I could not have stooped for it, had my life been on the issue. What a wonderful thing is fortune! or rather, how rarely can we plot for ourselves any combination of circumstances so successful as those that arise from what we deem accident. These that seemed evidences of failure

were the first promises of prosperity. My comrades had given me the nickname of "Gentleman Jack." The sobriquet attracted notice to me, and to my habit of never making a demand; and long ere I came to learn the cause, I found myself deriving all the advantage of it. Few now went by without paying; many gave me silver, some even accompanying the gift with a passing salutation, or a word of recognition. Slight as these were, and insignificant, they were far more precious to me than any praises I have ever listened to in my days of prosperity!

I gradually came to know all the celebrities of the town, and be myself known by them. How like a dream does it seem to me, as I think over those days! When Alderman Whitbread would give me a shilling, and Wilkes borrow a crown of me; when Colonel O'Kelly would pay me with a wink, and Sir Philip Francis with a curse; when Baron Geramb, frizzed, mustached, and decorated, lounged lazily along on the arm of Admiral Payne, followed by a gorgeouslyequipped chasseur, a rare sight in those days. Nor is it altogether an old man's prejudice makes me think that the leaders of fashion in those times had more unmistakably the signs of being "Grand Seigneurs" than the men of our own day.

I have said that the tide of fortune had turned with me, and to an extent scarcely credible. Many days saw my gains above a guinea; once or twice

they more than doubled that amount. I have frequently read in newspapers announcements of the fortunes accumulated by men in the very humblest stations statements which, with less experience than my own, I might have hesitated to believe; but now I know them to be credible. I know, too, that many of the donors who contemptuously threw their penny as they passed, were far poorer than the recipient of their bounty.

I

If time did not reconcile me to my lot, yet a certain hardihood to brave destiny in any shape, fortified me. reasoned repeatedly with myself on this wise.-Fate can scarcely have anything lower in store for me; from this there can be no descent in fortune. If, then, I can here maintain within me the feelings which moved me in happier days, and live unchanged in the midst of what might have been degradation, there is yet a hope that I may emerge to hold a worthy station among my fellow-men.

I will not affirm that this feeling was not heightened by an almost resentful sense of the world's treatment of mea feeling which, combat how I would, hourly gained more and more possession of me. To struggle against this growing misanthropy, I formed the resolve that I would devote all my earnings of each Sunday to charity. It was but too easy, in my walk of life, for me to know objects of want and suffering. The little close in which I lived -near Seven Dials-was filled with such; and amongst them I now dispensed the seventh of my gains; in reality far more, since Sunday almost

equalled two entire days in profit. Thus did I vacillate betwixt good and evil influences-now yielding-now resisting-but always gaining some little advantage over selfishness and narrow-mindedness, by the training of that best of teachers-adversity. How my trials might have ended, had the course of my life gone on uninterruptedly, I cannot even guess. Whe

ther the bad might have gained the ascendant, or the good triumphed, I know not. An incident, too slight to advert to, save in its influence upon my fate, suddenly gave another direction to my destiny; and though, as I have said, in itself a mere trifle, yet, for its singularity, as well as in its consequences, requires a mention; and shall have-albeit a short one—a chapter of its own.

The incident I am about to relate, has not at least so far as I knowever been made public. Up to three years ago, I could have called a witness to its truth; but I am now the only survivor of those who once could have corroborated my tale. Still I am not without hope, that there are some living who, having heard the circumstances before, will generously exonerate me from any imputation of being the inventor.

This preface may excite in my reader the false expectation of something deeply interesting; and I at once and most explicitly own that I have none such in store for him. It is, I repeat for the third time, an incident only curious from those engaged in it, and only claiming a mention in such a history as mine.

Ir is not worth telling, this story of mine at least, not worth writing. Told, indeed, as I have sometimes been called upon to tell it, to a circle of intel ligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside, and all snug and cosy within, it has gone off- though I say it, who should not indifferent well. But it is a venture to do as you would have me. Pen, ink, and paper are cold vehicles for the marvellous, and a "reader" decidedly a more critical animal than a "listener." If, however, you can induce your friends to read it after nightfall, and when the fireside talk has run for a while on thrilling tales of shapeless terror; in short, if you will secure me the "mollia tempora fundi," I will go to my work, and say my say, with better heart. Well, then, these conditions presupposed, I shall waste no more words, but tell you simply how it all happened.

My cousin (Tom Ludlow) and I studied medicine together. I think he would have succeeded, had he stuck to the profession; but he preferred the Church, poor fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble discharge of his duties. For my present purpose, I say enough of his character when I mention, that he was of a sedate but frank and cheerful nature; very exact in his observance of truth, and not by any means like myself of an excitable or nervous temperament.

My uncle Ludlow - Tom's fatherwhile we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in Aungier-street, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and Tom proposed that we should take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which would accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings.

Our furniture was very scant - our whole equipage remarkably modest and

primitive; and, in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Our new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Tom the back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy.

The house, to begin with, was a very old one. It had been, I believe, newly fronted about fifty years before; but, with this exception, it had nothing modern about it. The agent who bought it and looked into the titles for my uncle, told me that it was sold, along with much other forfeited property, at Chichester-House, I think, in 1702; and had belonged to Sir Thomas Hacket, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in James II.'s time. How old it was then, I can't say; but, at all events, it had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all that mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old

mansions.

There had been very little done in the way of modernising details; and, perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very walls and ceilings in the shape of doors and windows-in the odd diagonal site of the chimneypieces -in the beams and ponderous cornices -not to mention the singular solidity of all the wood-work, from the banisters to the window-frames, which hopelessly defied disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish.

An effort had, indeed, been made to the extent of papering the drawingrooms; but somehow, the paper looked raw and out of keeping; and the old woman, who kept a little dirt-pie of a shop in the lane, and whose daughtera girl of two and fifty- was our solitary handmaid, coming in at sunrise, and chastely receding again so soon as she had made all ready for tea in our state apartment; this woman, I say, remembered it, when old Judge Horrocks (who, having earned the reputation

The bedrooms were wainscotted, but the front one was not gloomy; and in it the cosiness of antiquity quite overcame its sombre associations. But the back bedroom, with its two queerlyplaced melancholy windows, staring vacantly at the foot of the bed, and with the shadowy recess to be found in most old houses in Dublin, like a large ghosty closet, which, from congeniality of temperament, had amalgamated with the bedchamber, and dissolved the partition. At night-time, this "alcove” -as our "maid" was wont to call it had, in my eyes, a specially sinister and suggestive character. Tom's distant and solitary candle glimmered vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking him-always itself impenetrable. But this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I can't tell how, repulsive to me. There was, I suppose, in its proportions and features, a latent discord - a certain mysterious and indescribable relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the fitting and the safe, and raised indefinable suspicions and apprehensions of the imagination. On the whole, as I began by saying, nothing could have induced me to pass a night alone in it.

I had never pretended to conceal from poor Tom my superstitious weakness; and he, on the other hand, most unaffectedly ridiculed my tremors. The sceptic was, however, destined to receive a lesson, as you shall hear.

We had not been very long in occupation of our respective dormitories, when I began to complain of uneasy nights and disturbed sleep. I was, I suppose, the more impatient under this annoyance, as I was usually a sound sleeper, and by no means prone to nightmares. It was now, however, my destiny, instead of enjoying my customary repose, every night to "sup full of horrors." After a preliminary course of disagreeable and frightful

dreams, my troubles took a definite form, and the same vision, without an appreciable variation in a single detail, visited me at least (on an average) every second night in the week.

Now, this dream, nightmare, or infernal illusion—which you please — of which I was the miserable sport, was on this wise:-I saw, or thought I saw, with the most abominable distinctness, although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhi bited the monotonous tableau of hor

ror, which made my nights insupportable, my attention invariably became, I know not why, fixed upon the windows opposite the foot of my bed; and, uniformly with the same effect. A sense of dreadful anticipation always took slow but sure possession of me. I became somehow conscious of a sort of horrid but undefined preparation going forward in some unknown quarter, and by some unknown agency, for my torment; and, after an interval, which always seemed to me of the same length, a picture suddenly flew up to the window, where it remained fixed, as if by an electrical attraction, and my discipline of horror then commenced, to last perhaps for hours. The picture thus mysteriously glued to the windowpanes, was the portrait of an old man, in a crimson flowered silk dressinggown, the folds of which I could now describe, with a countenance embodying a strange mixture of intellect, sensuality, and power, but withal sinister and full of malignant omen. Ilis nose was hooked, like the beak of a vulture; his eyes large, grey, and prominent, and lighted up with a more than mortal cruelty and coldness. These features were surmounted by a crimson velvet cap, the hair that peeped from under which was white with age, while the eyebrows retained their original blackness. Well I remember every line, hue, and shadow of that stony countenance, and well I may! The gaze of this hellish visage was fixed upon me, and mine returned it with the inexplicable fascination of nightmare, for what appeared to me to be hours of agony. At last

"The cock he crew, away then flew"