the gentleman it falls to, to speak up when his
name is declared."

The captain and his young friend looked hard
at the teetotum as it whirled rapidly, and harder
still when it gradually became intoxicated and
began to stagger about the table in an ill-conducted
and disorderly manner. Finally, it came
into collision with a candlestick and leaped
against the pipe of the old gentleman with
the flapping shirt collars. Thereupon, the chairman
struck the table once with his hammer
and said:

"Mr. Parvis!"

"D'ye hear that?" whispered the captain,
greatly excited, to the young fisherman. "I'd
have laid you a thousand dollars a good half-
hour ago, that that old cherubim in the clouds
was Arson Parvis!"

The respectable personage in question, after
turning up one eye to assist his memory—at
which time, he bore a very striking resemblance
indeed to the conventional representations of
his race as executed in oil by various ancient
masters—commenced a narrative, of which the
interest centred in a waistcoat. It appeared
that the waistcoat was a yellow waistcoat with
a green stripe, white sleeves, and a plain brass
button. It also appeared that the waistcoat was
made to order, by Nicholas Pendold of Penzance,
who was thrown off the top of a four-horse
coach coming down the hill on the Plymouth
road, and, pitching on his head where he was
not sensitive, lived two-and-thirty years afterwards,
and considered himself the better for the
accident—roused up, as it might be. It further
appeared that the waistcoat belonged to Mr.
Parvis's father, and had once attended him, in
company with a pair of gaiters, to the annual
feast of miners at St. Just: where the extraordinary
circumstance which ever afterwards rendered
it a waistcoat famous in story had occurred.
But, the celebrity of the waistcoat
was not thoroughly accounted for by Mr.
Parvis, and had to be to some extent taken on
trust by the company, in consequence of that
gentleman's entirely forgetting all about the
extraordinary circumstance that had handed it
down to fame. Indeed, he was even unable, on
a gentle cross-examination instituted for the
assistance of his memory, to inform the Gentlemen
King Arthurs whether it was a circumstance
of a natural or supernatural character. Having
thus responded to the teetotum, Mr. Parvis,
after looking out from his clouds as if he would
like to see the man who would beat that,
subsided into himself.

The fraternity were plunged into a blank
condition by Mr. Parvis's success, and the chairman
was about to try another spin, when young
Raybrock—whom Captain Jorgan had with
difficulty restrained—rose, and said might he
ask Mr. Parvis a question.

The Gentlemen King Arthurs holding, with
loud cries of " Order!" that he might not, he
asked the question as soon as he could possibly
make himself heard.

Did the forgotten circumstance relate in any
way to money? To a sum of money, such as
five hundred pounds? To money supposed by
its possessor to be honestly come by, but in
reality ill-gotten and stolen?

A general surprise seized upon the club when
this remarkable inquiry was preferred; which
would have become resentment but for the
captain's interposition.

"Strange as it sounds," said he, "and
suspicious as it sounds, I pledge myself,
gentlemen, that my young friend here has a manly
stand-up Cornish reason for his words. Also, I
pledge myself that they are inoffensive words.
He and I are searching for information on a
subject which those words generally describe.
Such information we may get from the honestest
and best of men may get, or not get, here or
anywhere about here. I hope the Honourable
Mr. Arson—I ask his pardon—Parvis will not
object to quiet my young friend's mind by saying
Yes or No.

After some time, the obtuse Mr. Parvis was
with great trouble and difficulty induced to
roar out " No!" For which concession the
captain rose and thanked him.

"Now, listen to the next," whispered the
captain to the young fisherman. "There may
be more in him than in the other crittur. Don't
interrupt him. Hear him out."

The chairman with all due formality spun the
teetotum, and it reeled into the brandy-and-
water of a strong brown man of sixty or so:
John Tredgear: the manager of a neighbouring
mine. He immediately began as follows, with
a plain business-like air that gradually warmed
as he proceeded.

IT happened that at one period of my life the
path of my destiny (not a tin path then) lay
along the highways and byways of France, and
that I had occasion to make frequent stoppages
at common French roadside cabarets—that
kind of tavern which has a very bad name in
French books and French plays. I had engaged
myself in an undertaking which rendered such
journeys necessary. A very old friend of mine
had recently established himself at Paris in a
wholesale commercial enterprise, into the nature
of which it is not necessary for our present
purpose to enter. He had proposed to me a certain
share in the undertaking, and one of the duties of
my post was to involve occasional journeys among
the smaller towns and villages of France, with
the view of establishing agencies and opening
connexions. My friend had applied to me to
undertake this function, rather than to a native,
feeling that he could trust me better than a
stranger. He knew also that, in consequence
of my having been half my life at school in
France, my knowledge of the language would
be sufficient for every purpose that could be
required.

I accepted my friend's proposal, and entered
with such energy as I could command upon
my new mode of life. Sometimes, my journeyings
from place to place were accomplished by