you stum, ole one, and once oo begin, oo danse all da same like da fat big porpus when um flounder in da warra. Hi! ho! tink a tingting!"

"Hurra! none but the brave deserve the fair!" echoed Tony, balancing on his tottering knees, and holding out his hands to the Black for a renewal of their wild dance, to the infinite dismay of the company. The horrified Miss Dotterel had already waddled out of the room, ejaculating, "O the filthy animal!-to be chucked under the chin for the first time in my life, and the creature to be a black !" The other females were preparing to follow her example, when the Captain, who had gone in search of the men-servants, and had found them all assembled in the court-yard, gaping at the performances of Punchinello, arrived to the rescue with a timely reinforcement. The butler took charge of Tony, who quietly suffered himself to be led out of the room, shouting at the same time," None but the brave deserve the fair!" while Joseph, a stout under-servant, firmly collared Pompey, who showed a disposition to resist this summary process, until he

should have completed the Jumbee-Jumbee dance. Joseph, however, hauled him away, the black wriggling and giggling, and expostulating with him as he retired, "Hosepp! Hosepp! oo comical dog! what oo bout? Gog! how oo tickle ma troat wid oo dam knuckles! Hosepp, I say!"-Doctor Dotterel called lustily after the servants to secure both offenders, that they might be set in the stocks for drunkenness; but Mr. Frampton limited his threats to Tony, saying, that he would himself take care to punish Pompey. In England, however, a drunken man is sure to excite a good-humoured smile, and awaken the sympathy of the lower order, a feeling of which the present delinquents found the advantage, for the servants, who were moreover all staunch advocates for the fair, dismissed Tony scot free, to find his way back to the George, and inducted Pompey to his own room, that he might sleep himself

sober.

CHAPTER VIII..

There was a love-born sadness in his breast,
That wanted stimulus to bring on rest;
These simple pleasures were no more of use,
And danger only could repose produce;
He join'd th' associates in their lawless trade,
And was at length of their profession made.

CRABBE.

NOTWITHSTANDING the ill-timed intoxication of Tony and of the Black ally by whom he had been admitted into Oakham-hall, the Captain, who had treated them at the George, was too veteran a practitioner upon bowls of punch, to be in the smallest degree affected by his own potations, or even to suspect that his companions could be injured by what appeared to him to be very temperate draughts. After their departure, therefore, he mounted his black blood mare, and still retaining his meerschaum

pipe in his mouth, shortened by taking out some of the joints that composed it, struck at a brisk pace across the country towards the New Forest, into the wild recesses of which he quickly plunged. The real name of this man was Lawrence Boulderson, though he had long ceased to be saluted by either of those appellations. Born in the Forest, his father, one of the under-keepers, who had charge of an extensive walk, employed him for some years in brouzing and feeding the deer, cutting and faggoting underwood, or watching for deerstealers and other trespassers upon his walk; but the youth had an innate predilection for the sea; the sight of the numerous vessels coasting the Isle of Wight channel, or passing round the Needles, which he could distinctly see from the high ground of his ordinary station, corroborated this tendency, and an accidental connexion with a band of smugglers, who had a concealed store in the haunts of the New Forest, enabled him to gratify it. His natural affections, however, which were strong, retained him for some time at home, until his father, a stern violent man, having unmercifully punished him

for some trivial offence, his proud bold heart revolted from the injustice, he quitted the paternal roof, and joining the smugglers, was not only allowed to indulge the long-cherished wishes of his bosom by being sent to sea, but was gradually initiated in all the mysteries, and inured to all the hardships and dangers of the lawless career upon which he had entered. For this mode of life, one that requires a rare union of almost incompatible qualities, in order to prosecute it with a fair chance of safety and success, he seemed to be so especially qualified by nature, as almost to justify the hyperbolical praise of one of his friends, who declared that he must have been born a smuggler; considering that character not in its paltry details, to which any sorry rogue may be competent, but with reference to its more enlarged, complex, and mercantile operations. Capable of every endurance, whether of fatigue or privation, absolutely insensible to fear, and yet discreet and cautious in encountering danger; never known to be intoxicated-a circumstance, however, which might rather be attributed to the singular strength of his constitution, than to