himself or drinking out of the water-bottle,
with the greatest satisfaction in seconding
himself according to form, and then came at me
with an air and a show that made me believe
he really was going to do for me at last. He
got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record
that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him;
but, he came up again and again and again, until
at last he got a bad fall with the back of his
head against the wall. Even after that crisis
in our affairs, he got up and turned round and
round confusedly a few times, not knowing
where I was; but finally went on his knees to
his sponge and threw it up: at the same time
panting out, "That means you have won."

He seemed so brave and innocent, that although
I had not proposed the contest I felt but a
gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go
so far as to hope that I regarded myself while
dressing as a species of savage young wolf, or
other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly
wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I
said, "Can I help you?" and he said "No
thankee," and I said "Good afternoon," and
he said "Same to you."

When I got into the court-yard, I found
Estella waiting with the keys. But, she neither
asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept
her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon
her face, as though something had happened to
delight her. Instead of going straight to the
gate, too, she stepped back into the passage,
and beckoned me.

"Come here! You may kiss me, if you like."

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I
think I would have gone through a great deal
to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the kiss was
given to the coarse common boy as a piece of
money might have been, and that it was worth
nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what
with the cards, and what with the fight, my
stay had lasted so long, that when I neared
home the light on the spit of sand off the point
on the marshes was gleaming against a black
night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging a path
of fire across the road.

POLICEMEN IN PRUSSIA.

NOT long since I read in company with other
readers of the arch-journal that tale of the
inoffensive British subject who had the misfortune
to be travelling with his wife and family on
a Prussian railway at the same moment as an
ill-omened Prussian doctor. The inoffensive
British subject had actually in his pocket a sheet
of tissue-paper, or letter of introduction, in
which a distinguished personage at home had
kindly asked, in general terms, " every one
whom it might concern," to take particular care
of the person described in the document, as "a
British subject travelling on the Continent," and
pay him every attention. Fortified with this
paper, the British subject had presented it
to various parties, whom it did concern, and
who had good-naturedly painted little pictures
of split eagles, and crowns, and inscriptions in
lamp-black over it, sprinkling it profusely with
sand and general dirt. So far the inoffensive
British subject was complimentarily treated.
But on that unlucky morning, when his seat
was taken by the medical practitioner, he
himself was dragged away by ruffians in uniform,
cast for a week into gaol, and was finally,
together with his nation, reviled in foul language
by a law officer of the Prussian crown. As I read
this gross outrage, a little historiette of personal
treatment in my own individual case, at the
hands of these gentry, came into my mind.

I am at Calais, where the action of the little
piece commences, newly descended from an
effete, shattered diligence— last of its tribe—
which has jingled over from Boulogne. I have
been assisted to the ground by some perilous
steps, not unlike a series of hall-door scrapers,
and am at once adhered to by a species of
human barnacle, or mussel, what seems to be a
stud-groom, but is, professionally, a commissioner,
and who never leaves me for a second as
long as I reside in the town. A gentleman of
easy address, and speaking the English tongue
with perfect fluency, not to be put back by
assurances that his services are not required, by
stern request to desist from dogging my steps,
and it is with a fiendish joy, when the hour of
departure arrives, that I tell him that he shall not
have a doit— that he has been forewarned that
he was a nuisance, a pest, a plague. He smiles,
and shrugs, and smiles, and is very sorry, but
it cannot be helped. He has meant well; and
is so seducing, finally, that he goes his way
rejoicing, with an ample guerdon.

Then we plunge into the night— the midnight
— and with an eternal burr, and huge
winnowing machine whirling ceaselessly in the
ear, and periodical shiver, and heavy blinking
eyes, and uneasy, and inconvenient limbs
exploring restlessly, and heads swathed in caps,
we make the night express journey through
Brussels. In the flash of broad daylight, feeling
very cold and creepish, find a new green
country, well wooded, swelling in easy hills and
valleys, skimming by us; with a perceptible
thickening in the clouds of tobacco; with eight
little green men winding horns of chase, cheerfully,
to one another, from distant extremities of
the "convoy;" in short, with a general Prussian
flavour over everything.

With a change, too, in company, the sleepy
nodding heads, the human pendulums that swung all
night long from side to side, and the ten restless
legs that searched accommodation all the night
long, having vanished utterly, and there were,
instead, fresh clean faces, faces that had washed and
had been at the steaming breakfast-table, not
wholly unconscious of buttered rolls and coffee
according to milk, and such delicacies, that
looked on new newspapers, and yellow little
pirates of English books; English faces, in
short— Mr. Blandman, and his two daughters,
Miss Blonde and Miss Brunette. These ladies,
fresh as daisies, and their father the most placid
eye-glassed grey-whiskered and benevolent of