not taken down; I grope along in darkness,
bring my shin in contact with some hard-edged
object, and tumble prone over what proves to
be a coal-scuttle. How it came there in July, I
want to know; but there it is, and there am I,
and after sprawling some moments among the
coals, I  get up, rub my smarting shin, brush off
as much coal-dust as consents to be removed,
and, casting a glance as I pass at the " banquet-hall
deserted," which last night looked the picture
of harmless conviviality, and which this morning
looks the picture of disreputable sickly revolting
dissipation, I open the door and pass out.

Cold again; that same searching cold that
chilled me through and through in my bath: I
wish I had put on something warmer; but if I
had, I should be roasted before I got back! Look
at those mists, lying asleep in the valley, or just
awake enough to

      Put forth an arm, and creep from pine to pine,
      And loiter, slowly drawn.

Don't I know what is in those mists: haven't
they sucked up fever, and ague, and diphtheria,
and typhus, and rheumatism, and low fever, and
Heaven knows what, from every low-lying
pasture, and every marsh, and every fen, and are
they not now laden and heavy and raw with
such burdens, and are they not bearing them
abroad and administering copious doses of them
to every " passing villager?" And my way lies
through that valley!

"Lovely morning!" says the voice of my
friend who is to accompany me, and who has
just joined me—  " glorious morning!"

I used to think my friend had a cheery, pleasant
voice; I never before detected anything
insulting or derisive in it; now, it sounds
envenomed: the more galling that it seeks to hide
itself beneath an appearance of the frankest
bonhomie.

I assent.  What's the good of arguing the point?

"Are you not glad you got up?"

This is a little too much. Luckily, I am saved
from quarrelling with my friend (which I should be
sorry to be obliged to do) by the appearance of
Rover and Stella, who have been let off the chain to
accompany us. They are nice dogs, and I am proud
of them, when dry and calm, as they are in the
middle of the day; but now, what use do they
make of their newly gained liberty? They roll
themselves on the lawn, among the dew and
the wormcasts, till they are soaking, and then
they come, plunging, in loud wide-mouthed
boisterousness, to leap on me, completing the
effect of the coal-dust on my light-coloured
summer costume.

Off we go, across wet fields that soak my
boots through in the first five minutes, my friend
striding along, singing, whistling, and talking to
the dogs, I following, sick, silent, and savage,
till my tormentor turns round, and remarks that
" I seem out of sorts."  I

         Grin horrible a ghastly smile

by way of answer, for speak I cannot.

It is over, and I am back again— back in
my room— I will not now stop to state in
what condition of mind, body, or attire— back
in my untidy and disordered room, everything
at sixes and sevens just as I left it, and I have
to set to to polish myself up for breakfast,
and my boots are sodden with wet, and my
stockings won't come off, except with tearing,
and there's the breakfast-bell, and I'm not ready;
no, nor anything the least like it, nor shall I be
for the next half-hour at least, and, what's more,
I shall not try to be.

Three-quarters of an hour later I make my
appearance at the breakfast-table, to find cold
tea, and tough sodden toast, and eggs that— and
ham which—— it doesn't signify, for I am much
too sick and wretched to eat any of them, were
they of the best.

But here the recollection of what next
occurred still awakes in me sentiments I would
rather not recal. I found that, instead of meeting
with that soothing sympathy and tender consideration
which my prolonged sufferings and exacerbated
feelings demanded, I was made the subject
of general mirth; that my friend had been
amusing the assembled company with a
highly-coloured facetious account of all I had
endured in that dreadful, dreadful walk. And, can
it be believed, that the hours of agony I had gone
through in the night were made the subject, not
only of comment, but of complaint, by a woman
(I always hated that woman— I always felt she
would do me an injury if the occasion served her,
and I was right) who had not been obliged to
leave her bed before nine o'clock!

"No wonder," she said— I see her red face
now, and her projecting teeth and gums, from
which the lips used to recede when she spoke or
smiled, leaving them exposed in all their native
hideousness— "no wonder you were unfit for an
early walk, for I'm sure you were up half the
night. I heard you over my head half a dozen
times at least "— the reader will remember I only
rose on two occasions— " and you woke me each
time. I had a mind to take my umbrella and
stand on a chair and tap on the ceiling to you."

It was lucky you didn't, I thought—
uncommonly lucky you didn't. If you had, I
should have overthrown every heavy article the
room contained. I should have put on the
thickest and most creaking boots I had, and
paced to and fro at intervals all through the
night. It would have been a relief to my feelings
to have tortured you, that I only regret you did
not suggest it by acting as you proposed.

I will not go through an account of the
weary, listless, interminable day; of the
slumberous, stupified evening that followed that,
in which I fell asleep in the midst of the delightful
discourse of my dear old friend, arrived
from town only just before dinner. I will not
say how I struggled to listen; how I pulled up
my eyelids by elevating my eyebrows to the
utmost height, and fixed my eyes with a wide-open
stare on the opposite wall; how I found