played at school. The matriculation of his son had brought him to Oxford; and if, as the youth's raw personal appearance very strongly suggested, his had been a home-education, it was no wonder the father looked alarmed and disconcerted at the style of life and companionship into which his son was likely to be thrown in the very outset of his university career.

What a preparation for the sacred duties of the ministry!' thought he, as he observed his son listening, with mouth agape, to Prettyman's description of his last steeple-chase and the heavy stakes he had won in the Christ Church drag. What an outrage on the pious founder's object!' And as Prettyman proposed to lay five to four in ponies that Fortescue's Toby would carry seven pounds more than Teddy-the-Tinker and lick his head off over the Bicester Vale, the old gentleman's endurance could go no further, and he said, emphatically

Surely, gentlemen, the sporting practices you speak of can't be 'known to the university authorities: verily they savour of New' market rather than Oxford, and tend directly to the subversion of ' that moral and religious culture one has a right to expect from this 'ancient seat of learning,'

6

'I am happy to say, sir,' said Prettyman, with imperturbable gravity, that our Dons do not discourage manly pastimes; on the contrary, some of them are first-flight men across a country; nor are 'they the worse Christians nor the less able scholars on that account. We come here, sir, to improve our knowledge of civilization and 'to gain enlarged views of life; not merely for book-learning, which, however well you may be crammed with it, is not necessarily wisdom, neither is it sound judgment.'

But, sir,' answered the old clergyman, warmly, without learning you would lack the materials for thought and right conclusions; and without the aid of such materials there can be nothing but blind prejudice and uninformed judgment. No, sir, you come here "ad "capiendum ingenii cultum," and not to indulge your passion for sport at the expense of your moral and intellectual culture.'

Having delivered this lecture he rang for his candle; and, taking his son under his wing, as if he dreaded the effects of further contamination, retired at once to his chamber.

The ovation Stoford met with on all sides from his old friends at Oxford rendered it impossible for him to turn his thoughts to business for some days; at length, after a consultation with Mr. Butler, the tutor, who had already so often befriended him with his kindly counsel, and who now so warmly congratulated him on the fortunate termination of his engagement with Grace Lampern, he paid a reluctant but necessary visit to Mr. Hunter, the attorney in Holywell Road.

The little man's eyes, as Stoford entered his den, looked wicked as those of a badger at bay; he had been informed of Grace's flight with Evelyn, and was well aware that the bond for ten thousand pounds, which by the instructions of his friend Lampern he had so

carefully drawn up, was now nothing more than so much waste paper; and the fact that, in ten days from that date, the bond would have become due, added not a little to the vexation he so keenly felt in the matter. That he and his client should have been so foiled was gall and wormwood to him; and he looked on the failure with the same kind of shame and disgust that a tiger is said to feel when he misses his spring.

I have been advised to call on you,' said Stoford, looking the lawyer straight in the face, respecting the bond your client Mr. Lampern holds against me; and which, as you are doubtless aware, has been cancelled by his daughter's elopement with Lord • Evelyn.'

The eyebrows of the little man rose almost to the roots of his hair, as with an expression of intense surprise he coolly said, 'Never 'heard a word of it, and don't believe it now; and, as to the bond, that is Lampern's business, not mine; you must settle that with ' him.'

The man's name had scarcely escaped his lips, when Lampern himself, in top-boot attire, his dress soiled and his face flushed with liquor and excitement, reeled into the room. Curse my luck!' he exclaimed aloud, ere his eye had caught sight of Stoford, who was sitting in the shade of a dark corner. Curse my luck! that 'fellow has done us after all: here's the bond; it's not worth the paper it is written on.' And, proceeding at once to drag it out of his coat-pocket, he threw it, with a tremendous oath, into the flames of the fire.

'Hold, man!' shrieked the lawyer, jumping to the rescue, and making a frantic dash at the burning document. Are you mad?' 'Let it alone,' shouted Lampern; it's only waste paper, I tell you;' at the same time, seizing the little man firmly by the collar, he dragged him savagely back; and in a few moments the document was reduced to ashes. Then, as he relaxed his hold, and was in the act of fishing out a smaller paper from a side pocket, he discovered Stoford; and instantaneously recovering his self-command, as if sobered by the sight of the man whom he had sought to injure, and whom he now consequently regarded with a more intense hatred than ever, he held out the certificate of marriage between Lord Evelyn and his daughter, and read it deliberately aloud, adding, with a malicious air of triumph, The girl might have done worse, Hunter: she at least will now have a home and a title into the 'bargain.'

But the insinuation touched not Stoford; he could afford to be calm, and generous too, as a man who has escaped a great danger; and when he had expressed a hope to Lampern that the marriage might prove a happy one for all parties, he said to the little attorney, Then, sir, my business with both of you is now at an end;' and bowing hastily to the two rascals, he quitted the den.

The rest of the story is soon told: Stoford, who, struggle against it as he would, had long been deeply attached to Blanche Crocker,

now returned to Devonshire without delay; and, as the reader is already aware, the sentiment between them was a mutual one, there was no longer the ghost of an objection, either on the part of his own conscience or that of his trustees, to scare him from the object that now occupied the very core of his heart.

'Twin-bound, both souls,' and drawn irresistibly together by the yearnings of a kindred love, a separate existence would have been a state of exile to both: so when Stoford, winding his arm tenderly round her waist, and supporting her head, with its mass of goldy locks rippling on his breast, tremulously put the question on which the happiness of both depended, the gentle pressure of Blanche's hand told him far better than words could have done it that in him would her spirit find its home, and be linked, one with his, for ever

more.

Thus, after his death, the hope of honest John Ball's life was fulfilled to the letter. Stoford, by his marriage with Blanche, the daughter of the only woman the old Squire had ever loved, succeeded to all his property: and as, in deference to his wife's wish, they settled at Foxtor, whose broad lands, adorned with grand timber, silvery brooks, and picturesque dingles, abutted on the Moor, the wild hunting-ground of the West, a situation more attractive to both of them could scarcely have been found.

Every building on the estate was in perfect repair; not a cottage requiring the touch of a trowel or an ounce of paint: but the kennels were cramped and old-fashioned; and as Stoford had signified his intention of hunting the country three instead of two days a week, his first work in stone and mortar was to build a new and commodious set of kennels on a sheltered and well-favoured site: nor did he forget to stock them with fresh blood from the stoutest hounds that England could produce. Robins, the huntsman, was in raptures, and only wished the old maister could see them now: ''twould bring un to life again, if anything could.'

To the interior of the mansion, already replete with every comfort that a country-house could require, was added yet one gift more, from John Crocker- The Old Oak Table,' now burnished and bright as a mirror; and if haply here and there indented by the recoil of shivered glasses and heavy whacks from the old Squire's signet ring, yet reflecting in its honest face the remembrance of many a pleasant tale, welcome guests, and a happy home.

The reader will anticipate the fate of poor Grace Lampern (for the mock-marriage ceremony gave her no right to another name), and will further conclude, from the false start she made and the ruthless hands into which she fell, that her future course would inevitably bring her to grief and ruin and so it proved: the whirl of pleasure and dissipation into which Evelyn and she plunged, night after night, in the gayest salons of Paris, and the heavy losses he sustained from play, so soured his temper, that, long before the period of the honeymoon had expired, his conduct to Grace had become not only cold and heartless, but almost brutal. The high

spirited woman, however, was not one to submit tamely to such treatment and scenes and recriminations ensued which ended at length in his telling her, point blank, that she was no wife of his ;' adding a cowardly threat that he would cut her adrift, if he had ' any more trouble with her.'

This terrible discovery drove her to the verge of madness; and conceiving in a paroxysm of rage, humiliation, and despair the bitterest hatred and contempt for the man who had so deceived her, she rushed forth from his presence and flung herself on the pitiless world, downwards to drift for evermore, a waif and stray on its wildest stream.

Once more, and once only, did she ever see Evelyn again, and that was at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, when he was married to a lady in his own rank of life, a peer's daughter, bright and beautiful as the morning star. When the officiating minister (it was the Bishop of London himself) asked the question, Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?' a scream, piercing and wild as that of a maniac, burst from Grace's lips, and every soul in the church shuddered as she said, 'That man is my husband; and I am his wedded 'wife, as God is my witness. Now marry him, if you dare.' She then fainted away, and, being removed by the hands of the police, the ceremony proceeded without further interruption: but that scream and apparition haunted Evelyn's dreams to the day of his death; and even in the gayest moments of his life, the words of the guilty Æneas, when he met poor Dido's ghost in the shades of Tartarus, would oft recur to his mind :

Funeris heu tibi causa fui,'

FOR AND AGAINST.

BY B. T. C.

OH a villain is he, of no common degree,
Always a murderer, often a thief,

Yet though strange it is true, he's so popular too,

To defend the old rogue not a few would take brief.
But, alas, for the shame that must cover our name,
Did ever such knavery stain counsel's shelves?

While doing our best in our client's behest,

We but save him from others to hunt him ourselves!

Had he only a voice he would tell you his choice
Would be to be rid of such base friends as these;
While to plead his own case with all cunning and grace,
You might back him against the most polished Q. C.'s.
Come, put him in dock, let us take a fair stock

Of all that he does, good, indifferent, or bad;
A handsomer face never smiled in disgrace,

Nor could eyes with that twinkle be made to look sad.

'Tis a long tale of harm that comes up from the farm,
The poultry are killed and the grey goose is gone;'
Feathers strewing the field must their evidence yield,
A man might drop feathers, he'd never leave bone.
Gates smashed, hedges broken, on all sides betoken
The wanton advance of a galloping host;

Meadow, turnips, and wheat, torn by fifty score feet,
And wherever 'tis wettest men seem to ride most.
We must frankly admit 'tis a very hard hit,

"This closes the case,' says the judge with a frown, 'An easy task here, where the guilt is so clear, 'You'll agree on a verdict without going down; But before passing sentence we'll ask the defendants, If haply an outlet their cunning may twig; 'Perhaps they will rise to suggest compromise,

' And spare us the trouble of “dishing their wig." We may yet break a lance, 'tis indeed the last chance, A question in season has oft saved the day; When the scent is so cold, of your beauties catch hold, Nor to puzzle through every meuse faltering stay. No use in denial, 'twill not gain the trial,

Nor whiten the charges already so black;
Yet unlucky the debt that has not an asset,
Or a bill without ever a name to its back.

So we boldly declare that our gay client there,
For good must have credit, though guilty of ill;
Paradoxical thief, let it not pass belief,

While taking his measure, brings grist to the mill :
For where would the sale be, with Thompson or Tailby,
Were markets deserted by all the red coats,

The plaintiff may swell, but he knows very well,
That the field eats his mutton, the horses his oats!
And are there not others, both cousins and brothers,
Whose livelihood wholly by hunting is made?
Boots, saddles, hats, breeches, must all have their niches,
And loudly bear witness how good 'tis for trade.
Still, Heaven forbid we attempt to get rid,

By senseless contention, of damages done,

And by making amends we may hope to make friends,
And forward the chance of a find and a run.

So round him we'll rally and give him a tally,
The whole covert side, whether first-flight or tail;
With such surety at hand, the worst foe will look bland,
And willingly counsel admittance to bail!

Oh happy the county where forthcoming bounty
Commands, in due measure, the populi vox,
Where in warm grassy lying no enemy spying,
There kennels in safety the gallant dog fox!