good wine from the cellar and eatable dishes
from the kitchen, and altogether the repast
passed pleasantly off.

I had not neglected to take proper precautions
for the safety of the large amount of money
of which I was custodian. When we went
down to supper I brought the heavy little valise
with me, and used it for a footstool. When I
retired to rest, I did not fail to place the treasure
under my head, beneath the feather-bed
and bolster, so that it could not be removed
without my knowledge during the night. In
acting thus I did not positively anticipate that
such vigilance would be needful. Van Marum's
frank manner would have disarmed suspicion,
had I been of a distrustful nature; but I thought
it my duty to keep strict watch and ward.

We slept well: I in the bed of state, with its
dingy plumeau of crimson silk, its coarse sheets,
and successive layers of feather-stuffing: Van
Marum on the sofa, among pelisses and rugs.
My own repose must have been unusually
profound, thanks, perhaps, to the drowsy properties
of a sort of sleeping draught which my Dutch
friend had skilfully compounded with hot wine
and spices, and which we had imbibed after
supper—Van Marum having pressed, with his
usual generosity, the lion's share on me. When
I awoke it was broad day, the outer door was
unlocked, and I was alone. Not a trace of my late
acquaintance remained, His portmanteau was
gone, his cloaks were gone, and nothing but a
couple of pillows and the mark of his
recumbent form on the dusty sofa were visible to
prove that he had ever shared my apartment.

Quite alarmed, I sprang out of bed, and,
lifting the bolster, saw the dark morocco
leather and brass mountings of my portmanteau
precisely as I had left them. Not trusting to
appearances, I drew out the precious valise,
and found, to my great joy, that the casket was
intact. The excellent Bramah lock had not
been forced, the hinges were in their proper
place, all was well. I then bethought me of
my other effects. My unlocked trunk was
closed; I opened it, and saw the shirts and
coats in regular layers, just as I had packed
them. My clothes, neatly folded, were on the
chair where I had placed them; my watch
ticked on the table; and in the pocket of the
coat, which I had hung from a nail, I found
my purse undisturbed, my pocket-book, my
passport in its yellow leather case, and other
little matters. Not the value of a pin's head
had been abstracted, and I, who had been
disposed to regard myself as a dupe, and my fellow-
voyager as a rogue, now took shame to myself
for my unjust and gratuitous suspicious. Still,
where was Van Marum?

There was no bell, but I hastily dressed,
opened the door, and bawled in French and
German for the waiter. The fourth summons
brought a tow-headed girl with an empty pail in
her hand, and though she could speak nothing
but Russian, she presently comprehended me so
far as to send the waiter—a Jew, like the landlord,
and able to converse in broken German.

"I have a note for you, mein Herr, and what
would you like for breakfast?" said the man,
unwrapping the dirty napkin which he carried
as a badge of office, and handing me a letter. It
was from Van Marum, written in French, and
very short. My late companion informed me
that a telegram from head-quarters had called
him off to Warsaw on professional duty, that he
regretted the abrupt termination of our
acquaintance, wished me bon voyage, and had
paid the landlord for his share of room and
supper. The letter was signed " Cornelius Van
Marum," and by its blots and hasty writing
showed proofs of hurry.

The landlord, who entered the coffee-room
while I was seated at my breakfast, told me in
his execrable German that the " foreign lord" had
gone off in a hired telega two hours before, on
the Warsaw road, as fast as four good nags could
wheel him along, and that he had charged him to
say " a thousand gracious things" to the English
excellency on the part of M. Van Marum.

I passed but a dull day at Wilna. To be sure,
the churches were curious, with their amazing
pictures and the gaudy robes of the high-capped
and long-haired priests, but I soon found that
delicate olfactory organs did not agree with
close neighbourhood to such a swarm of
unsavoury fellow-creatures as were gathered in
these edifices. The town was full of a wild
unshorn crowd of buyers and sellers, some in
caftans, some in sheepskins, but all unkempt,
noisy, and more than half tipsy.

My chief occupation was the paying of
constant visits to the railway station, in hopes that
there might be an end to the interruption of the
ordinary traffic. But in vain. Troops, troops,
troops, kept flowing on in an apparently
inexhaustible stream towards the west and south.

Unwilling to spend my whole time in
company with the treasure I carried, I hit upon the
expedient of placing the valise in a cupboard,
which I locked, as well as the door of my room,
and, slipping the keys into an inner pocket,
felt secure as to the safety of the advance so
anxiously expected by Druce and partners. I
dined early, but by no means well, since I
had now no friend to interpret for me, and
half the Russian plats on whose long-tailed
names in the bill of fare I laid my finger at
random proved unfit for civilised consumption.
Having finished my bottle of hock, which ought
to have been superlatively good at the price of
seven roubles, I strolled for the fourth time to
the station, where I had the satisfaction to
learn from the good-tempered old Dane who
presided over the telegraph instruments, that
there was a lull in the bustle of martial
preparation, and that by half-past four P.M. of the
following day I might reckon upon the means
of pursuing my journey.

I went back to the hotel in good spirits.
Scarcely had I crossed the threshold before the
Hebrew waiter, with his many-stained napkin
rolled round one of his dingy thumbs, bolted out
of some secret lair where he had been washing
glasses and settling plates upon a rack.