day, and are said to be as numerously attended;
the same general characteristics are noticed, and
similar external manifestations take place—
except that the deluded wretches are dumb!

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XLIV.

FROM time to time, a couple of grave, judicial-
looking men would arrive and pass the forenoon
at the Ambras Schloss, in reading out
certain documents to me. I never paid much
attention to them, but my ear at moments
would catch the strangest possible allegations
as to my exalted political opinions, the
dangerous associates I was bound up with, and the
secret societies I belonged to. I heard once,
too, and by a mere accident, how, at Steuben,
I had asked the gaoler to procure me a horse,
and thrown gold in handfuls from the windows
of my prison to bribe the townsfolk to my
rescue, and I laughed to myself to think what
a deal of pleading and proof it would take to
rebut all these allegations, and how little likely
it was I would ever engage in such a conflict.

By long dwelling on the thought of my noble
devotion, and how it would read when I was
dead and gone, I had extinguished within my
heart all desire for other distinction, speculating
only on what strange and ingenious theories
men would spin for the secret clue to my motives.
"True," they would say, "Potts never cared
for Harpar. He was not a man to whom Potts
would have attached himself under any circumstances;
they were, as individuals, totally unlike
and unsympathetic. How, then, explain this
extraordinary act of self-sacrifice? Was he
prompted by the hope that the iniquities of
the Austrian police system would receive their
death-blow from his story, and that the mound
that covered him in the churchyard would be
the altar of Liberty to thousands? or was Potts
one of those enthusiastic creatures only too
eager to carry the load of some other pilgrim
in life?"

While I used thus to reason and speculate, I
little knew that I had become a sort of European
notoriety. Some idle English woman, however,
some vagrant tourist, had put me in her book
as the half-witted creature who showed the coins
and curiosities at Ambras, and mentioned how
for I know not how many years I was never
heard to utter a syllable except on questions of
old armour and antiquities. In consequence, I
was always asked for by my travelling countrymen,
and my peculiarities treated with all that
playful good taste for which tourists are famous.
I remember one day having refused to perform
the showman to a British family. I had a headache,
or was sulky, or a fit of rebellion had got
hold of me, but I sauntered out into the grounds,
and would not see them. In my walk through
a close alley of laurels, I chanced to overhear
the stranger conversing with Hirsch, and making
myself the subject of his inquiries; and as I
listened, I heard Hirsch say that one entire room
of the château was devoted to the papers and
documents in my case, and that probably it
would occupy a quick reader about twelve
months to peruse them. He added, that as I
made no application for a trial myself, nor any
of my friends showed an inclination to bestir
themselves about me, the government would
very probably leave me to live and die where I
was. Thereupon, the Briton broke out into a
worthy fit of indignant eloquence. He
denounced the Hapsburgs and praised the Habeas
Corpus; he raved of the power of England, our
press, our public opinion, our new frigates. He
said he would make Europe ring with the case.
It was as bad, it was worse than Caspar Hauser's,
for he was an idiot outright, and / appeared to
have the enjoyment of certain faculties. He
said it should appear in the Times and be
mentioned in the House; and as I listened, the
strangest glow ran through me, a mild and
pleasurable enthusiasm, to think that all the
might, majesty, and power of Great Britain was
about to interest itself in behalf of Potts!

The Briton kept his word; the time, too,
favoured him. It was a moment when wandering
Englishmen were exhuming grievances throughout
every land of Europe; and while one had
discovered some case of religious intolerance in
Norway, another beat him out of the field with
the cold-blooded atrocities of Naples. My
Englishman chanced to be an M.P., and therefore
he asked, "in his place," if the Foreign
Secretary had any information to afford the
House with respect to the case of the man called
Harper, or Harpar, he was not certain which,
and who had been confined for upwards of ten
months in a dungeon in Austria, on allegations
of which the accused knew nothing whatever,
and attested by witnesses with whom he had
never been confronted.

In the absence of his chief, the under-secretary
rose to assure the right honourable gentleman
that the case was one which had for a
considerable time engaged the attention of the
department he belonged to, and that the most
unremitting exertions of her Majesty's envoy at
Vienna were now being devoted to obtain the
fullest information as to the charges imputed to
Harpar, and he hoped in a few days to be able
to lay the result of his inquiry on the table of
the House.

It was in about a week after this that Hirsch
came to tell me that a member of her Majesty's
legation at Vienna had arrived to investigate
my case, and interrogate me in person. I am
half ashamed to say how vaingloriously I thought
of the importance thus lent me. I felt somehow
as though the nation missed me. Waiting
patiently, as it might be, for my return, and yet
no tidings coming, they said, "What has
become of Potts?" It was clearly a case upon
which they would not admit of any mystification
or deceit. "No secret tribunals, no hole-and-corner
commitments with us! Where is he?
Produce him. Say, with what is he charged?"
I was going to be the man of the day. I knew
it, I felt it; I saw a great tableau of my life
unrolling itself before me. Potts, the young