Having dismissed her cunning and credulous, but very honest old counsellor, with an injunction to keep her watchfulness alive, Eliza proceeded, at a pace more sedate and measured than we recollect to have yet seen her adopt, to take her seat in the drawingroom, where Miss Alicia was closely engaged over her inexhaustible embroidery. So different, indeed, from her usual happy step, was the gait with which her aunt heard her approach and enter the room, that the good old lady raised her head, to note who the supposed stranger might be.

"Dear child," she said, " is it you? How pensive and languid!— What is the matter?"

"I can scarcely inform you, Aunt; at least, not clearly and distinctly. I am in bad spirits, that's all." The confused state of Eliza's apprehension of what had just been detailed to her, left her, indeed, unable, if she were willing, to communicate the cause of her dejection.

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"I trust, my love, you experience nothing like a presentiment of evil," continued Miss Alicia, ever tender and romantic.

"I do not know, dear Aunt. And yet it is, perhaps, under such a depression I labour."

"Heaven grant you may misconceive the nature of your sensations, Eliza! for, oh !"-(Miss Alicia's usual sigh, deprived of all spirit by constant exercise, sounded, though loudly given, rather as an accompaniment than as a signification of woe.) "I remember but too well, that for a month previous to the dreadful account of my never-to-be-forgotten loss, I was visited by deep forebodings of unhappy tidings. And, my dear niece, although my mind is strong enough to reject the notion of supernatural prognostic, and although even the fact I allude to did not induce a general credulity, permit me further to inform you, that his death was foretold to the wretched survivor."

"Dear Aunt, is it possible?" questioned Eliza, sitting down, and looking with unusual interest at the old lady.

"It is an unquestionable truth, child; I will relate the circumstances. Upon an October evening, the twilight setting in, I was walking down the avenue, more careless than I now am of the sharp breeze that rudely discomposed my youthful locks, and blew hardily against my forehead. The leaves were falling, and I mourn. fully watched their twirling on the wind, the last time they were to feel its upward current. Between two of the venerable trunks that lined my path, an aged and meanly attired female suddenly appeared. She craved charity in the uncouth accent of the Northerns"

"A northern woman, you say, Aunt?"

"Yes, my love; the accent, so very different from our southern one, is easily recognised."

"And how long is this ago ?"

"Alas! the never-to-be-effaced date can by me be readily and faithfully supplied. I speak of an evening over which time has rolled the shadows of more than thirty years."

Eliza looked more sombre still. It was, of course, only a coincidence. But something in her Aunt's words-her mention of the northern woman-seemed to her excited mind to chime in with the story she had just heard from Nanny. The good old lady continued:

"She craved a charity from me. The suddenness of her appearance had somewhat startled me, and I did not immediately reply. She renewed her petition in an impatient manner: I felt for my purse-found that I had left it behind me; and was consequently obliged to give a refusal. She spoke again: her voice was, in its lowest key, an unpleasant one; now it sounded like a continued

scream.

"You have a hard heart!' she said.

"Indeed, good woman,' I answered, 'I would anxiously relieve your wants, were the means at present to my hand.'

"Tell me no such story!' she screamed again: 'but for your want of charity, listen to me: you will have sorrow of your own to think of! You will never again look on him whose image is, this moment, uppermost in your mind. A strange land will hide his bones.'"

Miss Alicia's voice here sank low; a tear trembled in her "lacklustre eye;" and was responded to by a nervous suffusion in that of her niece.

"A month after," she added, "I learned his death!"

"Did the shocking woman go away as soon as she had said these words, Aunt ?"

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'No, dear child: I stood for a moment astonished and terrorstricken. She confronted me. I then thought I saw another figure, the figure of a man, moving slowly and stealthily from behind another trunk"

"Dreadful!" whispered Eliza.

"Dreadful!" cried a deep voice close behind the two ladies. Both screamed in unison; and with a sudden jerk of her head, which had been brought closely in contact with Miss Alicia's, our heroine displaced, and somewhat shattered, her aunt's spectacles. A general laugh succeeded, and Sir William Judkin, for he was the

new-comer, took an opportunity to ask, with gay meaning, "Do you give any credit to prognostics of the nature of that with which, I apprehend, the wild woman favoured you, dear madam ?”

"No! my good young friend: although in the particular instance referred to, the prophecy proved, alas! but too accurate." Miss Alicia's usual long-drawn sigh followed.

"Well; we need not become utterly credulous, even while we refuse, in a particular case, to remain obstinate to our own experience. I rejoice to divine from your wisdom, dear Miss Alicia, reasons why I should not quite despise a prediction which has been spoken to myself this morning."

The ladies looked interested.

"In good earnest, yes.

You remember a knavish fellow who

attracted our notice in the review-field ?"

"The dice thrower ?" questioned Eliza, quickly.

"Yes; he who consulted his dice as we are told astrologers read the stars; and whispered disclosures into ears that, if one might judge by the faces of the listeners, were not prepared to receive, in such a manner, such intelligence."

"I noticed all this," said Eliza gravely, and with increasing in

terest.

"Well. The fellow's blustering cleverness much attracted me. Perhaps there is something in a superior mind, even when exercising its mastery for knavish purposes, which we cannot refuse to admire. On my way hither to-day, I encountered this conjuror ; and he it was who spoke this augury to me."

"And that augury gave you such good spirits ?" asked Eliza. "It did, indeed."

"Then it was a happy one?" she continued, recollecting how contrary had been the import of Rattling Bill's prophecy to herself, and anxious to learn whether or not his promises to Sir William were in connexion with the same subject.

"Listen, dearest Eliza, and judge. I had seen the man standing at the road-side, long before I rode up to him. As soon as we met, he pulled off his hat, and made me a salute of friendly recognition. I returned his civility, reined up within speaking distance, and requested to know whither he was bound.

"I was waitin' to meet your honour; and well did I guess the road you'd be spurrin' over,' he answered, smiling cunningly.

"There is, as you may have remarked, an approach to careless, saucy familiarity in the varlet's manner, that almost sues for chastisement and yet a jocularity and a peculiar acknowledgment of

addressing a superior to qualify his boldness, and save him from salutary discipline.

"Waiting for me, Sir?' I asked; and upon what account, pray ?'

"I have a matther in my knowledge that concarns your honour,' he replied."

It is to be remarked, that the Baronet successfully imitated the manner and the brogue of the person he was pourtraying.

"Let me hear it, then,' I said.

"I'm tould your honour has an open hand-an' so every one to his thrade, as the mouse-thrap-maker said to the lord bishop. Did your honour ever hear the story?'

"Never; but, I presume, I am now to hear it.'

"There was a mouse-thrap-maker, an' he lived by his thrade; an' he'd make a rat-thrap just as handy. An'-(no help for it, I hear!)-his Lordship's reverence was very round, an' smooth, anʼ comfortable to look at. 'Have you your prayers, my good man?' says he to the rat-thrap-maker.-'A neighbour's share,' says the other. Repate 'em for me.' The mouse-thrap-maker done his best; but he went asthray, an' made bud a middlin' offer enough; an' morebetoken, he put in a curse in the middle, becase his work went wrong wid him, from minding two things at the same time.— 'I'm ashamed o' my life o' you, for one ould sinner,' says the Bishop, to come to this time o' life, an' not to have your prayers.'—' Will you answer me a foolish sort of a question ?' says the mouse-thrapmaker. By coorse,' says the Bishop, making answer. Well, asthore: what's the length o' this wire, that 'ill go to make a mousethrap?'—'I'm sartin I can't tell,' says the Bishop again.—“ Well, then, every man to his thrade,' says the other: 'an' so, do you mind yours, and I 'ill mind mine, and there'll be no jostlin' on the road betwixt us.'

"He told this anecdote humorously," continued Sir William. "And truly," said Miss Alicia, graciously, "I think your imitation must be equally good; I have seen, on the stage, worse specimens than you give us of the drollery of the Irish character!"

"That is flattering, dear Madam, but I believe I have a talent for catching the rich peculiarities of our humble countrymen. As to the stage, mention it not.-One seldom sees any thing represented there, but a broad, unnatural caricature of the Irishman, which depends for effect exclusively upon a novel and extravagant mode of speaking, set off by buffoonery and grimace, and studiously put in contrast with the propriety of tone and manner about it. And while

even the genuine brogue is thus unknown or disregarded,—a brogue, by the way, not half as barbarous as many to be found throughout England, the strong intellect of the Irish of the lower classes, displayed in their most humerous sallies, and redeeming them from absurdity, even while they are amusing, is, generally speaking, almost lost sight of."

"This may be very true; but you are straying from the subject,' said Eliza.

With laughing apologies to his "fair remembrancer," Sir William proceeded.

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"The application to himself of the anecdote made by my acquaintance, was, that the announcement of future events formed part of his professional practice; and so every man to his thrade:" and before he would tell me what was to happen me, he expected his fee. To such an arrangement, notwithstanding the flattering report my soothsayer had heard of my openhandedness, I demurred; but finally it was agreed, that I should measure my recompense by the value of the information to be conveyed, strictly bargaining to pay the moment he should have ended his prognostic. After all, I suspect this bargain amounted pretty nearly to payment in advance: so that I believe I was outwitted.

"All preliminaries having been settled-Now,' quoth, my prophet of prophets, I come here to tell your honour to go on bravely, an' like a man, at the big house-for-' and 'he grinned intelligence,' as Sterne has it, 'from ear to ear.'”

Sir William made an abrupt stop. He perceived, notwithstanding Miss Alicia's praises of his imitative powers, that his talent had at last been indiscreetly exercised. His mistress's cheeks crimsoned at the vulgar allusion to their relative situations and mutual feelings, her pretty brow contracted, her lips curled, and her eyes glanced downward. He turned to Miss Alicia. She had ceased her embroidering, folded her arms, sat up perpendicularly in her chair, and was craning her long and stately neck at him.

"How the Deuce," he thought, " am I to get out the rest? If a mere allusion covers the one with angry blushes, and sets the other erecting her virgin crest in this absurd fashion, what is to happen when they hear all that they must hear? Let me see ;the words in which the rascal conveyed his promise of happiness to me, may be translated."

A minute's pause ensued. He was not desired by either lady to

go on.

"Yet neither am I forbidden," he continued, to himself; "and