vouchsafed to him on this occasion, but it is probable they had some reference to the business of the day; for, muttering some unintelligible words about his pig, he made sundry efforts to rise.

"What do you want?" enquired Dinah, seeing his critical condition"Better sit still for an hour or two, and sleep it off."

A growl, and reiterated attempts to leave his chair, were the only answer to this sagacious hint.

"Sit down, Whiffle; you'll expose yourself. You to be seen in this condition-for shame!"

A monosyllable energetically pronounced, which is generally appropriated to the female specimens of the canine tribe, showed that Dinah's eloquence was not of much weight with the self-willed Stephen.

"Sit still," she said at last, "you will hurt yourself if you attempt to move. The kitchen door is open, and you will never get down the steps.'

"I will though," stuttered Whiffle, at last succeeding in his efforts, and staggering along the floor. "I will, I tell you. I'll go down and have one other look on him afore I tumbles in. Go to bed, Dinah; to bed, you jade, and I'll come this moment.

Two or three lurches hither and thither at length brought him to the door at the top of the stairs leading down to the kitchen, where the object of his veneration was extended. "Steady, steady," cried Dinah, as he swayed to and fro with the candle in one hand"steady." But before she had time to reach his side, the step was taken, -crash, crash, down the stairs thundered the prodigious weight--a heavy fall at the bottom-a grunt as of the bursting of a bagpipe-perfect silence and thick darkness told Dinah that her worst fears were realized. In fear and trembling she searched for another candle, lighted it at the decaying fire, and went into the kitchen.

There, at full length, lay the huge carcasses, Whiffle and his pig, lovely in their lives, in their deaths undivided. It needed a very slight observation to convince Dinah of the condition of the late Mr Whiffle, and as soon as she saw that all chance of his resuscitation was hopeless, she displayed a degree of heroism and selfcommand, that would have done honour to a Roman matron. With the most delicate sensitiveness she spread a large table-cloth over the defunct, for Stephen, in order more fully to enjoy his supper, had stripped himself as far as decency would allow, and locking the kitchen-door, she proceeded to the parlour to make preparations for alarming the neighbourhood with the spectacle of her distress. For this purpose she finished all that was left in the bottle by way of a support under her great affliction, and then, wisely considering that no honest man can endure the idea of leaving the world in debt, she resolved to wipe off such a stain from the memory of her master by paying herself in full for all the services she had rendered him. His hoards were ransacked, and as between such friends the ceremony of counting the money might have the appearance of distrust, she transferred the grand total to her own trunk, along with all the articles of silver she could find, as "friendship's offerings" from the deceased. "All this," she murmured devoutly, as she closed the lid of her strong-box, "should have been mine, for many's the time he has promised to make me an honest woman--but he was a mean, selfish beast, and the Lord's will be done. I am resigned to every dispensation." When all these preparations were ended, she again unlocked the kitchen-door, threw on her bonnet in a mighty hurry, and sobbing and sighing as heavily as she could, she proceeded to alarm the neighbours, and call in the surgeon to her master's aid.

John Piper arrived at Stephen's mansion about five minutes after that worthy gentleman had performed the somerset which laid him on the kitchen-floor. Every thing was dark and silent. Dinah was busy in other parts of the house-the shutters were still

unclosed, and John, knowing the locality too well to stand in need of a light, glided noiselessly in by the kitchenwindow, felt his way cautiously along the floor, and kicking with his foot on the vast mass reposing beneath the table-cloth, concluded that he had dis

covered the object of his search. "How heavy the beast is!" muttered John, "I shall never be able to get him on the truck by myself. Here, Letty, come in and lend a hand!". By incredible exertions, hauling and tugging by the table-cloth, the hungry pair managed to deposit the mighty burden on the little vehicle, and full of glowing anticipations of a smoking steak from the overloaded ribs, they proceeded to their dwelling. Happily without being observed by any human being, they reached their destination, bundled the prodigious carcase, still shrouded in the table-cloth, into their own kitchen; and while John went to the yard to deposit the truck, Letty made preparations for the approaching feast. The plates were laid on the table, the gridiron cleaned, the fire stirred up, and now nothing was wanting but the return of the husband to furnish the materials for Letty's culinary skill. John at last returned, took down a knife from the corner cupboard, sharpened it for some time on the kitchen-dresser. "Now, Letty," he said, "off with the cloth, and let us have a slice out of the monster's rump."

"Hush," said Letty, somewhat alarmed, "I think I hear steps on the street."

"Ah! poor fellow," said Letty, "I had forgotten him quite and he hasn't had no supper this blessed night, nor no dinner as I know of-Ah! John."

This latter invocation was accompanied with a significant look at the table-cloth on the floor, which John quickly comprehended. "Surely, surely, Letty," he said, "when all is got right again we will ask Mr Mason to join us. It will only be another slice or two, and Mr Mason is a perfect gentleman, though his father, poor

man, was ruinated like the rest of us by that infernal rascal old Whiffle. Off with the table-cloth till I dig the knife into him." But before this injunction could be complied with the noise came to their own door. A loud knocking began, which their fears magnified, with the thundering of a constable's baton. The knife was thrown down in terror, and John stood anxiously listening to the continued rat-tat-tat! "What's to be done, dear John?" cried Letty, almost hysterical. in her alarm; "Oh that we had resolved to starve on, rather than steal the pig-they will take us up for the robbery !-my poor children!-oh dear, oh dear!"

"Hark!" cried John, "they are come for us already. They will break in the door. Put out the light, Letty; let us save ourselves if we can."

"Open the door, Mr Piper," whined the voice of Dinah Prim, "it has pleased Providence to visit me with affliction. Is not there a doctor as

lives in your upstairs?"

"Coming, Mrs Prim, coming, madam," flustered John, now recognising the voice; "rather a late hour this, Mrs Prim. What can I do for you?" he continued, cautiously opening the window.

"Oh he is gone! he is carried off," sighed the lady.

"Carried off! ahem-quite a mistake-good-humoured jest, that's all," said John.

"Jest! mistake indeed! No; he is carried off, I assure you; but I bows to the one as did it. It was done in kindness."

66

Certainly, ma'am, no doubt of it," said the perplexed barber, not exactly knowing whether Dinah was aware of the truck adventure or not.

"If I had had any varning of it," continued Mrs Prim," it wouldn't have been so bad; but to be stolen away from me so momentaneously!"

"Why, yes ma'am," said John, more and more bewildered; "but ye see, ma'am, the truck is still in the back-yard, and your loss can soon be replaced.'

"Oh, never, never," sobbed Dinah; "all things is for the best. But if you will tell the young doctor, as lodges here, it will be a great satisfaction if he will just cut my master's throat, that there mayn't be no chance of his being buried alive."

"Me, marm," exclaimed John, in the utmost surprise; "me tell Mr Mason to come for to go for to cut Mr Whiffle's throat, marm! No, he is an infernal old rascal, there aint no manner of doubt; but as to cutting his throat, it's vat no gentleman would condescend for to do, let alone the chance of being hanged for't; and who the devil vants to bury the old brute alive?"

"Come, Mr Piper, we are wasting precious time. If you don't send the young doctor to me directly, I will carry my complaint to the Mayor."

"For any sake, Mrs Prim, don't talk of the Mayor; I'll send Mr Mason directly, marm; and if you wish it, I'll have my truck at your door in a moment."

"Oh, no, I want nothing of that kind-only the young doctor. Come with him yourself, you may be useful."

"Certainly, marm," said John Piper, as Dinah walked off; "but that 'ere idea about cutting the villain's throat is the rummest as ever I heard. Taking a little bacon aint nothing to that; but what can the old rascal want with Mr Mason and me? Pr'aps to pay us our money? At any rate I'll go and tell him to his face that this here pig is my own, and that I aint ashamed of taking my own property."

With these and similar soliloquies, the magnanimous barber mounted the crazy stairs, and entered the room where Mr Mason was still poring over his books by the light of one miserable candle. "Ask your pardon, Mr Mason," said John, "but just as we was agoing to supper, Dinah Prim, old Whiffle's maid, came in to say that her master wished for to see you and me on very peticular business."

"Me! Mr Whiffle to see me?" asked the young man in surprise, "Is he ill ?"

"Can't exactly say. Mrs Prim did talk in a hexeterordnary way about wishing you to cut his throat."

"Open a vein the woman means. I will take my lancet directly. He is plethoric, and is perhaps threatened with the premonitory symptoms of apoplexy. Follow me as soon as you can, there is no time to be lost."

And if the old rascal says any thing about his loss to night before I comes, tell him I take it in part payment."

But the young man hurried out of the room without enquiring into the worthy barber's exact meaning, and proceeded to the house of Mr Whiffle on Esculapian thoughts intent. On arriving there Mrs Prim was still greatly agitated, but whether from the circumstance of two or three tumblers of gin-and-water being insufficient to restrain her emotion, or from some other cause, Mr Mason took no time to investigate. With a wave of her hand, which unfortunately extinguished the candle, she gave him to understand that his duty was in the kitchen

"You will find him on the floor," she hiccupped in the extremity of woe, and to the kitchen the practitioner accordingly groped his way. Stumbling down the steps, kicking his shins against tubs and chairs, he at last came to what he considered his patient; felt tenderly for the wrist, and was no little astonished to find he had hold of the trotter of a tremendous pig. Mason was not superstitious, but he had read of the metempsychosis.

Mr

"Bring a candle, Mrs Prim; there is some mistake here."

That worthy lady, gathering all her energies once more, coaxed warmth enough into the fire to relight her candle, and staggered into the kitchen to the assistance of the surgeon.

"I s'pose he's quite cold, sir," she said, holding the candle with tipsy gravity over the gigantic porker; "there aint no chance of bringing him to life again, for he must have broken his neck half an hour ago."

"Who? Mrs Prim-who must have broken his neck?"

"Why, the gentleman as you are feeling the pulse of. Do you think I don't know my own master."

"This, madam, this is a large sow or other animal of the porcina genus."

"A sow ?-not my master?-then where can he be?" And the terrified woman looked all round for the body of the vanished Stephen. "I told him how it would be the devil has carried him away-oh, dear-there, in this very spot I seed him land-put a tablecloth over him and all; and now he is spirited away. Don't you think you smell brimstone, sir?"

"Woman," replied young Mason, you are either drunk or mad; you have played a most indecent trick in hoaxing a medical man. I know not what can have been your object, but

I have suffered enough already from the villany of Mr Whiffle not to be made the butt of your heartless jests."

The young man hurried home brimfull of wrath and offended dignity. He took no notice of the shivering barber's agitation as he opened the door. "You need not go to Whiffle's," he said, as he rushed up stairs," he is quite recovered, and does not need any assistance."

"Heaven be praised; then my neck is saved from the gallows," ejaculated John Piper, as he again joined his wife, who had sunk into a chair, and was hiding her face in her hands. "Old Whiffle has got suddenly well again, and told Mr Mason that he had no need for medicines. Let us to bed good wife-the fright has taken away my appetite, and I wish the old rascal much joy of his fat pig."

The moment Mr Mason had left the house to attend on Mr Whiffle, the barber had gone into the kitchen where his wife was still busied in making preparations for the supper. "Now, Letty, lose no time," he cried, "the coast is quite clear. I shall be back before the steak is done. Off with the cloth, and let me cut them nicely!" The cloth was at last unwound, and it would be useless to attempt a description of the horror and surprise that fell upon the astonished pair, when in place of the portly chops of the much coveted pig they recognised the hated visage of the detested Whiffle.

Oh

"That rascal," cried John Piper, "will be the death of me, first by starvation, and then the gallows. Letty, we shall both swing on the other side of the bridge, cheek by jowl with the murderer as was hanged last week."

"But we didn't murder him, John." "What does the law care for that? We can't bring him to life again, and therefore we shall certainly be hanged.' "But we can take him back again." "Impossible. That old woman has raised the alarm by this time. But how in heaven's name has the pig turned into old Whiffle?"

This was a complete puzzle. "I'll swear it was a pig," said John," when I laid it on my truck. It must have been Ingilby the conjuror, that was here at the fair, that turned a neck of veal into a goose and goslings. But what's the use of talking?" continued the barber. "All that won't save our necks. We must get quit of him.”

After a moment's consultation, it was resolved to leave the unfortunate Stephen in the darkest part of the street, and rigidly to deny all know

ledge of the adventure, if any enquiries were made on the subject. They accordingly again called the truck into requisition, and as the least suspicious place they could find, they laid him against the back of the watchbox of James Williams, the guardian of the streets of Heckingham, believing that that valuable officer had betaken himself to his couch. In this, however, they were mistaken, for that useful individual was sunk in a profound sleep within the very box against which they placed their burden. Silently the barber and his wife returned home;-waited the Doctor's arrival with no little expectation, and were relieved by the news he gave them of Mr Whiffle's recovery. When James Williams the watchman had continued his slumbers far into the night, he resolved to alter the venue of the conclusion of them to his own bed at home. For this purpose he got up, but no sooner had he altered the centre of gravity of his box, by removing his own weight from the back part of it, than it yielded to the superincumbent ponderosity of the inanimate Whiffle, and falling with hideous ruin and combustion-down it enclosed the scarcely awakened watchman in his own sentry-box, with such a mountainous weight above it that his efforts to extricate himself were for a long time unsuccessful. When at last he contrived to rear his prison, which enclosed him like a shell, and creep out on hands and knees, his efforts, and the persevering obstinacy of his overthrower, had irritated him to such a pitch of frenzy, that the first thing he did was to apply sundry thwacks of his baton on the body of his assailant, which Piper had reinvested in the table-cloth.

"I'll teach you," exclaimed the

vengeful watchman, " to turn over my box-playing the ghost, too, you goodfor-nothing vagabond, dressed up in an old sheet I'll make you give up the ghost, I will. Who are you?" he continued rather surprised at receiving neither an answer, nor any resistance to his attack. "Come, hold up your face to the light"-advancing the lanthorn, which had luckily escaped extinction in the mêlée. "Ha! gracious, Mr Whiffle," he cried, starting back" and dead, too-what shall I do?—these baton marks would hang me in any court!" But we need not trace the farther adventures of the hapless Whiffle, which were as numerous as those of the Hunchback in the Arabian Nights. We pass over how the watchman placed him against a physician's door-how the physician threw him into the river, and how finally he got into the hands of the confederates of the man who, the preceding week, had been hanged in chains for robbery and murder. Several days passed on-and still no news of the lost one. A sort of enquiry was instituted-Dinah Prim told her story. A report got abroad, which was industriously circulated by John Piper, that the devil had carried away the defrauder of his neighbours; but those who did not go so far as this, believed that Mr Whiffle had resolved to leave the neighbourhood, and that the housekeeper's story was the result of ignorance and superstition. In the meantime, John Piper took possession of the house, signing an agreement, to give it up on Mr Whiffle's coming to claim it; and as his eloquence had been efficacious in persuading a good many people that there was something very mysterious in the Doctor feeling the pig's pulse instead of Mr Whiffle's, and that there was a dreadful coincidence between the disappearance of the missing man and the continued presence of the "hanimal," few people objected to the Barber taking possession of the porker also, binding himself to account for it when its owner made the demand.

Dinah Prim also, in the first agitation of her alarm, had dropt some hints of the money she had taken, of which the watchful barber availed himself, to arrest it for the benefit of the creditors. Other discoveries of the places in which Whiffle had deposited his spoils were also made, and every thing

was in a fair way to render the disappearance of Mr Stephen one of the happiest circumstances which had happened in the town of Heckingham since the ever memorable period of his failure, when an unexpected incident occurred which increased the amazement of the inhabitants in a tenfold degree, and perhaps, if the truth were known, their satisfaction at the same time.

The Mayor of that eventful year was the most celebrated tailor that Heckingham had ever produced. He had made liveries for many years for the Lord-lieutenant of the county, and not many months before this time had made a shooting-jacket for the High Sheriff. When a man is at the top of his profession, and at the same time Mayor of his native town, a little pride may perhaps be excusable. There is indeed no denying that Mr Clips was one of the vainest of men. He was vain of himself, of his shop, of his wife, of his children. He was vain not only of the beauties of his native town, but of every thing connected with it. He was not a little proud that Heckingham boasted of the smallest church and the largest prison of any borough town in England; but at the present moment the acmé of his pride was the fact that during his mayoralty a malefactor had actually been hung in chains.

It was perhaps about a week after the mysterious disappearance of Mr Whiffle, that the worshipful the Mayor of Heckingham, with a finely gilt chain dangling across his breast, a gold-headed cane in his hand, and gratified vanity ruling triumphant on every feature, accompanied an admiring stranger in an inspection of the curiosities of the place. "This here by the church-gate," began the Mayor, "is our stocks, and that there just op. posite is the public-house-very convenient, you see, sir-the mealifactors haven't far to go. A little farther on is our prison. Excellent accommodation, and I am happy to say always quite full. The town-hall you have already seen. There is a little anecdote about that there figure of Justice over the door. Fine statty, aint it? Well, sir, you see we have a theatre here, and once when there was a row because Pizarro came on drunk, and give Rollo a bloody nose, the mob became uproarious and broke every thing