you will yourself become better, more charitable,
more kind-hearted, wider in reach of thought,
more catholic in philanthropy? I can imagine
such a world, and feel it to be a Paradise—a
world with no social distinctions, no inequalities
of condition, and consequently no insolent
pride of station, nor any degrading subserviency
of demeanour, no rivalries, no jealousies—love
and benevolence everywhere. In such a sphere
the calm equanimity of mind by which great
things are accomplished would in itself
constitute a perfect heaven. No impatience of
temper, no passing irritation——

"Where the——are you driving to, sir?"
cried I, as a fellow with a brass-bound trunk in a
hand-barrow came smash against my shin.

"Don't you see, sir, the train is just starting?"
said he, hastening on; and I now perceived
that such was the case, and that I had
barely time to rush down to the pay-office and
secure my ticket.

"What class, sir?" cried the clerk.

"Which has she taken?" said I, forgetting
all save the current of my own thoughts.

"First or second, sir?" repeated he,
impatiently.

"Either, or both," replied I, in confusion; and
he flung me back some change and a blue card,
closing the little shutter with a bang that
announced the end of all colloquy.

"Get in, sir!"

"Which carriage?"

"Get in, sir!"

"Second-class? Here you are!" called out
an official, as he thrust me almost rudely into
a vile mob of travellers.

The bell rang out, and two snorts and a
scream followed, then a heave and a jerk,
and away we went. As soon as I had time to
look around me, I saw that my companions
were all persons of an humble order of the
middle class—the small shopkeepers and traders
probably of the locality we were leaving. Their
easy recognition of each other, and the natural
way their conversation took up local matters,
soon satisfied me of this fact, and reconciled me
to fall back upon my own thoughts for occupation
and amusement. This was with me the
usual prelude to a sleep, to which I was quietly
composing myself soon after. The droppings of
the conversation around me, however, prevented
this; for the talk had taken a discussional tone,
and the differences of opinion were numerous.
The question debated was whether a certain Sir
Samuel Somebody was a great rogue or only
unfortunate. The reasons for either opinion were
well put and defended, showing that the
company, like most others of that class in life in
England, had cultivated their faculties of judgment
and investigation by the habit of attending
trials or reading reports of them in newspapers.

After the discussion on his morality came
the question, Was he alive or dead?

"Sir Samuel never shot himself, sir," said a
short pluffy man with an asthma. "I've known
him for years, and I can say he was not a man
to do such an act."

"Well, sir, the Ostrich and the United
Brethren offices are both of your opinion," said
another; "they'll not pay the policy on his
life."

"The law only recognises death on production
of the body," sagely observed a man in
shabby black, with a satin neckcloth, and whom
I afterwards perceived was regarded as a legal
authority.

"What's to be done, then, if a man be drowned
at sea, or burned to a cinder in a lime-kiln?"

"Ay, or by what they call spontaneous
combustion, that doesn't leave a shred of you?" cried
three objectors in turn.

"The law provides for these emergencies
with its usual wisdom, gentlemen. Where
death may not be actually proven it can be
often inferred."

"But who says that Sir Samuel is dead?"
broke in the asthmatic man, evidently impatient
at the didactic tone of the attorney. "All we
know of the matter is a letter of his own signing,
that when these lines are read I shall be no
more. Now, is that sufficient evidence of death
to induce an assurance company to hand over
some eight or ten thousand pounds to his
family?"

"I believe you might say thirty thousand,
sir," suggested a mild voice from the corner.

"Nothing of the kind," interposed another;
"the really heavy policies on his life were held
by an old Cumberland baronet, Sir Elkanah
Crofton, who first established Whalley in the
iron trade. I've heard it from my father fifty
times, when a child, that Sam Whalley entered
Milford in a fustian jacket, with all his traps in
a handkerchief."

At the mention of Sir Elkanah Crofton, my
attention was quickly excited; this was the
uncle of my friends at the Rosary, and I was at
once curious to hear more of him.

"Fustian jacket or not, he had a good head
on his shoulders," remarked one.

"And luck, sir! luck, which is better than
any head," sighed the meek man, sorrowfully.

"I deny that, deny it totally," broke in he of
the asthma. "If Sam Whalley hadn't been a
man of first-rate order, he never could have made
that concern what it was—the first foundry in
Wales."

"And what is it now, and where is he?"
asked the attorney, triumphantly.

"At rest, I hope?" murmured the sad man.

"Not a bit of it, sir," said the wheezing
voice, in a tone of confidence; "take my word
for it, he's alive and hearty, somewhere or other,
ay, and we'll hear of him one of these days: he'll
be smelting metals in Africa, or cutting a canal
through the Isthmus of Heaven knows what,
or prime minister of one of those rajahs in India.
He's a clever dog, and he knows it too. I saw
what he thought of himself the day old Sir
Elkanah came down to Fairybridge."

"To be sure, you were there that morning,"
said the attorney; "tell us about that
meeting."

"It's soon told," resumed the other. "When