human men, who spent his days, I was positive,
in preparing little surprises in the shape of
jewellery, dresses, and general decoration, for
his two " girls."

Miss Blonde does crochet work, busily; Miss
Brunette reads her little yellow pirate; Mr.
Blandman pursues his Times newspaper— no
older than yesterday week— with much zest
and steadiness. He looks hungrily at my journal
of that denomination, which was full of youth
and freshness, and artfully makes use of it as a
lever to an introduction.

In a quarter of an hour the crochet needle
is doing its work in a languid halting insufficient
manner, and the little yellow pirate rests
half closed upon its owner's knee; while a
gentleman opposite is relating, with much animation
of gesture, passages drawn from his
experiences of travel. It is discovered presently
that there was a Miss Jenkinwaters of St.
John's Wood, whose acquaintance is common
both to the gentleman and the young ladies;
and the little common memories, domestic
incidents of the most trivial nature, that we
contrived to hang upon Miss Jenkinwaters of
St. John's Wood, seem to me now, to be
perfectly surprising; yet then, I was very grateful
to Miss Jenkinwaters of St. John's Wood, in
that far-off country. " You must come and see
us," Sir. Blandman said, warming to me
gradually, "at our country place. Stop with us
some time. We fill our house at Christmas;
have theatricals, charades, hunting, dancing— a
regular festival, in short. You must come to us
and— Halloa! what are we stopping here for?"

The convov had stopped short in a narrow
gorge, with high sloping banks, but without
platform or station, beyond a wretched kind of
hutch, or sentry-box; and, on looking out of
the window I could see all the doors open, and
a band of the spiked green men crawling up the
steps of the carriages. We seemed to be a steam
diligence stopped and rifled in a lonely pass of
the Abruzzi by bandits. I put this little conceit
in a lively manner to my companions, and they
were much diverted. It was discovered, however,
that we were at that moment upon an imaginary
line, called the Frontier the point where the
edge of Belgium joins that of Prussia and that
the green men with the spiked helmets were the
officials of this latter odious country, violently
forcing passengers to halt, to stand and deliver
passports. In about another half-hour we should
roll into the city of the wells— Aachen, or Aix-
la-Chapelle— where it had been already arranged
that we were to dine together at the sign of The
Great King.

Our own door was presently flung open, and the
odious fireman's helmet was discovered about
the level of the floor, lifting itself slowly. A
voice, issuing from under the hairy eaves of
sandy moustaches, said, "Vos basseborts,
messieurs!" and waited, obstructing light and air,
while Miss Brunette opened with a click a little
morocco leather travelling warehouse, artfully
disposed in chambers and compartments and
pigeon-holes and pockets and general snug
accommodation, and took out a neatly-bound
pocket-book. The spiked fireman gruffly
unfolded the rustling sheet, and joined it to his
general heap: clutched my document, too, and
disappeared.

"Yes," said Mr. Blandman, in his soft manner,
"you must come to us in the country. Plenty
of good shooting and hunting. We shall amuse
you some way. Let me see— to-day is the
twenty-sixth— could you come—"

Again a spiked fireman; but a spiked fireman
ultor; an avenger— a chastising fireman— with
mischief in his dull eye. He pointed to me with
his finger; he held my passport in his hand.

"Vo' bassebort," he said, tapping the document;
"bas en règle. Vaut dézendre."

"What do you mean?" I said, impatiently;
"it is perfectly in rule. Observe the capon,
or bird of your country, duly daubed in the
regulation lamp-black by the authorised official
— the 'Polizei-Director,' I think he is fancifully
termed."

"Vaut dézendre," said the odious fireman,
rustling his papters menacingly; "you must
speak with the Herr Director."

I turned to my companions with a smile and
light laugh, which must have sounded hollowly,
for I felt a presentiment of evil; I saw a spectral
bird, a ghostly raven, perched upon the fireman's
helmet.

"I shall set it right in a moment," I said;
"it is only some or the red tape of these
precious officials!"

But as I looked, it seemed to me that a sort
of constraint had come over their faces: they
did not appear to see it in the playful light in
which I put it.

"A most awkward circumstance," said Mr.
Blandman, dryly.

"Very unpleasant, indeed," said Miss Blonde,
doubtfully.

Miss Brunette said nothing, but was busy
searching a chamber in the little travelling ware-
honse.

"Thank Heaven!" I said, desperately,
appealing to that habeas corpus corner which is
in the breast of every Englishman "thank
Heaven, in our free country we have none of
this tyranny, this degrading inquisitorial—"

Mr. Blandman coughed.

"It may be very necessary," he said.

"Vaut dézendre!" the infuriated fireman
struck in from the door.

With a presentiment that all was over—the
banquet at the Grand Monarch, the Christmas
festivity, the theatricals, the huntings, the shootings,
down at that old ancestral residence— was
it called Blandman Manor?— I bowed my head
meekly, and followed the green official up to the
hutch or sentry-box, where a large miller in a
white linen coat and spectacles was busy spreading
his lamp-blacks and bisected capons over
whole sheaves of rustling papers.

"This is the Herr Director," says the green
fireman.

Herr Director glared at me a moment, then
pounced on an open broad sheet which had been