that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have thirty-four and sixpence in my pocket, of which I want a shilling for the waiter and eighteenpence for my cab. You rich foreigners and swells may spend what you like" (I had him there for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothesman's); "but a man with a family, Mr. What-d'you-call’im, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone."

But

"Bah!" he said. "Nunkey pays for us all, as you say. I will what you call stant the dinner, if you are so poor!" and again he gave that disagreeable grin, and placed an odious crooked-nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. I was not so afraid of him now, for we were in a public place; and the three glasses of port-wine had, you see, given me courage.

"What a pretty snuff-box!" he remarked, as I handed him mine, which I am still old-fashioned enough to carry. It is a pretty old gold box enough, but valuable to me especially as a relic of an old, old relative, whom I can just remember as a child, when she was very kind to me. "Yes; a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies-most ladies, carried a boxnay, two boxes-tabatière and bonbonnière. What lady carries snuff-box now, hey? Suppose your astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a prise? I can remember a lady with such a box as this, with a tour, as we used to call it then; with paniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world!-ah! that was a time that was a time! Ah, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye! At Bungay on the Waveney, did I not walk with thee, Eliza? Aha, did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee then? Do I not see thee still?"

This was passing strange. My ancestress-but there is no need to publish her revered name-did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's, where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane. She used to wear little black velvet shoes, with the prettiest high heels in the world.

"Did you did you know, then, my great gr-ndm-ther?" I said.

He pulled up his coat-sleeve-" Is that her name?" he said.

"Eliza

There, I declare, was the very name of the kind old creature written in red on his arm.

"You knew her old," he said, divining my thoughts (with

his strange knack); "I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Bury ball. Did I not, dear, dear Miss ————?” As I live, he here mentioned dear gr-nny's maiden name. Her maiden name was Her honored married name

was

"She married your great gr-ndf-th-r the year Poseidon won the Newmarket Plate," Mr. Pinto dryly remarked.

Merciful powers! I remember over the old shagreen knife and spoon-case on the sideboard in my gr-nny's parlor, a print by Stubbs of that very horse. My grandsire, in a red coat, and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders, was over the mantelpiece, and Posiedon won the Newmarket Cup in the year 1783!

"Yes; you are right. I danced a minuet with her at Bury that very night, before I lost my poor leg. And I quarrelled with your grandf, ha!"

As he said "Ha!" there came three quiet little taps on the table--it is the middle table in the "Gray's-inn Coffee-house," under the bust of the late Duke of W-ll-ngt-n.

"I fired in the air," he continued; "did I not?" (Tap, tap, tap.) "Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterwards. Captain Brown,' I said, 'who could see Miss Sm-th without loving her?' She is there! She is there!" (Tap, tap, tap.) "Yes, my first love—

But here there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means "No."

"I forgot," he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wan features, "she was not my first love. In Germ- -in my own country-there was a young woman

Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively little treble knock; and when the old man said, "But I loved thee better than all the world, Eliza," the affirmative signal was briskly repeated.

And this I declare UPON MY HONOR. There was, I have said, a bottle of port-wine before us-I should say a decanter. That decanter was LIFTED UP, and out of it into our respective glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appeal to Mr. Hart, the landlord-I appeal to James, the respectful and intelligent waiter, if this statement is not true? And when we had finished that magnum, and I said-for I did not now in the least doubt of her presence-"Dear gr-nny, may we have another magnum?"-the table distinctly rapped “No.”

"Now, my good sir," Mr. Pinto said, who really began to be affected by the wine, "you understand the interest I have taken in you. I loved Eliza (of course I don't mention

family names). "I knew you had that box which belonged to her-I will give you what you like for that box. Name your price at once, and I pay you on the spot.”

"Why, when we came out, you said you had not sixpence in your pocket."

"Bah! give you anything you like-fifty-a hundred-a tausend pound."

"Come, come," said I, "the gold of the box may be worth nine guineas, and the façon we will put at six more."

"One tausend guineas!" he screeched. "One tausend and fifty pound, dere!" and he sank back in his chair-no, by the way, on his bench, for he was sitting with his back to one of the partitions of the boxes, as I dare say James remembers.

"Don't go on in this way," I continued, rather weakly, for I did not know whether I was in a dream. "If you offer me a thousand guineas for this box I must take it. Musn't I, dear gr-nny?"

The table most distinctly said, "Yes ;" and putting out his claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hooked nose into it and eagerly inhaled some of my 47 with a dash of Hardman.

"But stay, you old harpy!" I exclaimed, being now in a sort of rage, and quite familiar with him. "Where is the money.

Where is the check?"

"James, a piece of note-paper and a receipt-stamp!"

"This is all mighty well, sir," I said, "but I don't know you; I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me that box back again, or give me a check with some known signature."

"Whose? Ha, HA, HA!”

The room happened to be very dark. Indeed, all the waiters were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen snoring in their respective boxes. I saw a hand come quivering down from the ceiling-a very pretty hand, on which was a ring with a coronet, with a lion rampant gules for a crest. I saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. Pinto, then, taking a gray receipt-stamp out of his blue leather pocket-book, fastened it on to the paper by the usual process; and the hand then wrote across the receipt-stamp, went across the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as it waving him adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling.

There was the paper before me, wet with ink. There was the pen which THE HAND had used. Does anybody doubt me? I have that pen now. A cedar-stick of a not uncommon sort, and holding one of Gillott's pens. It is in my inkstand now, I

Pay the

tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check, for such the document was, was the writing of a female. It ran thus:-"London, midnight, March 31, 1862. bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia. To Messrs. Sidonia, Pozzosanto and Co., London."

"Noblest and best of women!" said Pinto, kissing the sheet of paper with much reverence. "My good Mr. Roundabout, I suppose you do not question that signature?"

Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pozzosanto & Co. is known to be one of the richest in Europe, and as for the Countess Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that encrmously wealthy establishment. There was only one little difficulty, the Countess Rachel died last October.

I pointed out this circumstance, and tossed over the paper to Pinto with a sneer.

"C'est à brendre ou a laisser," he said with some heat. "You literary men are all imbrudent; but I did not tink you such a fool wie dis. Your box is not worth twenty pound, and I offer you a tausend because I know you want money to pay dat rascal Tom's college bills." (This strange man actually knew that my scapegrace Tom has been a source of great expense and annoyance to me.) "You see money costs me nothing, and you refuse to take it! Once, twice; will you take this check in exchange for your trumpery snuff-box?"

What could I do? My poor granny's legacy was valuable and dear to me, but after all a thousand guineas are not to be had every day. "Be it a bargain," said I. "Shall we have a

glass of wine on it? says Pinte; and to this proposal I also unwillingly acceded, reminding him, by the way, that he had not yet told me the story of the headless man.

"Your poor gr-ndm-ther was right just now, when she said she was not my first love. 'Twas one of those banale expres sions (here Mr. P. blushed once more) "which we use to women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first love; no woman any man's. We are in love in our nurse's arms, and women coquette with their eyes before their tongue can form a word. How could your lovely relative love me? I was far, far too old for her. I am older than I look. I am so old that you would not believe my age were I to tell you. I have loved many and many a woman before your relative. It has not always been fortunate for them to love me. Ah! Sophronia! Round the dreadful circus where you fell, and whence

I was dragged corpse-like by the heels, there sat multitudes more savage than the lions which mangled your sweet form! Ah, tenez ! when we marched to the terrible stake together at Valladolid-the Protestant and the J- But away with memory! Boy! it was happy for thy grandam that she loved me

not.

"During that strange period," he went on, "when the teeming Time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend, Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it: though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and directorthe ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It boots not to tell it: why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity—or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to you, but which yet you cannot understand? Words are symbols of things which you know, or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly thirty-eight minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored, and, to relieve my ennui, drank a half-glass or so of wine.) "LOVE, friend, is the fountain of youth!" It may not happen to me once-once in an age: but when I love, then I am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved theeah, how fondly! Wine, I say, more wine! Love is ever young. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Béchamel—the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false!" The strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more agitated than he had been when speaking about my gr-ndm-th-r.

"I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her in the language of all countries, and tell her the lore of all ages. I could trace the nursery legends which she loved up to their Sanscrit source, and whispered to her the darkling mysteries of Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild chorus that rang in the dishevelled Eleusinian revel: I could tell her, and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the Saban Queen, which Hiram breathed in the abysmal ear of Solomon-You don't attend. Psha! you have drunk too much wine!" Perhaps I may as well own that I was not attending, for he had been carrying on for about fifty-seven minutes; and I don't like a man to have all the talk to himself.

"Blanche de Béchamel was wild, then, about this secret of