left it at the house of friend after friend, and
frequently took away with me a silk umbrella
in its stead, but it was invariably sent back.
I have gone into some of the lowest streets
in London, have made some trifling purchase
of a marine storeseller who was obviously a
receiver of stolen goods—I have placed the
umbrella against his counter, and have hurried
away at my quickest pace; but the light of
honesty has flashed at once into the abode of
roguery and crime. A ragged boy or girl has
run frantically after me, with my umbrella. I
have gone to umbrella-makers, and have offered
to sell or exchange the remarkable specimen of
their art, which I carried in my hand. But
never was the master of the shop at home when
I called, and never had he left any person
authorised to effect an exchange or a purchase.
I could always find some one in charge, with
full authority to sell any number of umbrellas;
but I could never find anybody entrusted with
power to buy one, or take one in exchange.

It struck me at last, that I would take it to
the nearest pawnbroker, and offer it as a pledge
for a sum too small to be refused. I had never
until then visited an establishment of the sort, and
I felt nervous as I approached the door—more
nervous when a friend, who seemed almost to
rise out of the pavement, suddenly shook me
by the hand, and asked me where I was going?
When I had quitted him, he stopped and looked
after me, so that I was not able to dash boldly
into the shop, but lingered at neighbouring
windows, contemplating objects wholly devoid
of interest. How long I looked at some pigs'
pettitoes in one shop, and at some blacking-
bottles in another, I cannot conjecture. At
last, assuming that I was wholly unobserved, I
entered the temple of interested benevolence.

"Well, sir," said the young man at the
counter, with an air more patronising than is
assumed by the generality of tradesmen towards
their customers; "what can we do for you?"

"I merely come to——" thus I began, when
I perceived that my umbrella was not under my
arm. I rushed out of the shop leaving my
sentence unfinished, and met my friend returning
from his expedition. Though he merely made
some common-place remark, I could see by his
manner that he had distinctly perceived my
egress, and, chancing to look back towards the
shop, I could see the young man's face protruding
from the doorway, watching me with evident
suspicion. My situation was miserable. Before
me stood an old friend of the family, a warm
opulent dreadfully respectable man, eyeing me
with diminished respect; behind me was an utter
stranger, conjecturing that I was a thief.

When I got home my umbrella was in the
stand in the passage. Perhaps I had left it
there. I cannot positively say whether I did
or not, but something told me that it would be
useless to make any other attempt to deposit it
as a pledge.

As the end of another February approached,
a happy thought occurred to me. Why should
I not, on the anniversary of the day that had
enriched me with the umbrella, take a turn in
Swampy Field and restore it to the rightful
owner? Though the umbrella had been placed in
my hand on the 29th of February, a day which
occurs only once in four years, I could regard
the 1st of March as a very fair anniversary,
There is this in common between the 29th of
February in leap-year and the 1st of March in
other years,—that they both follow the 28th of
February. And there was no reason to suppose
that a spirit, habituated to regard the essence
of things, would regard a chronological arrangement
merely made to adapt the calendar to
mortal purposes.

I left London by railway, and on the evening
of the 1st of March I was in Swampy Field
with my umbrella up. There was not a cloud
in the sky, and so bright was the moon that the
country could be seen as by daylight.
Nevertheless, I walked up and down the field with my
umbrella, at full spread. No object appeared,
save a group of boys, who took advantage of
the bright moonlight to extend their hours of
play, and who noticed me as a ridiculous
figure. An umbrella held up at noon under a
broiling sun, answers the purpose of a parasol,
and brings no contempt on him who holds it;
but a man who walks up and down a field by
moonlight beneath a perfectly cloudless sky,
with an outspread umbrella in his hand, is
guilty of an absurdity that no one is bound to
tolerate. The derision of the boys I endured
with the fortitude of one who knows that he is
in the wrong, and who justly merits whatever
befals him. When their verbal sallies were
followed by missiles of mud and stone I retreated,
without the slightest feeling of anger against
my small persecutors. Had I been in their
place, I should have thrown missiles also.

Months and months passed away. Every
night I had dreamed of the skeleton and the
bat, and the dreams had lost their terror. I
believe that if I had lain from night till morning,
without a visit from the familiar spectre, I
should have felt my rest incomplete. As for
the umbrella, I had so often put it in one corner
and found it in another, that I looked at its
locomotion as a matter of course; and if I had
chanced to find it in the place where I had left
it, my sensations would have been like those of
a man whose watch has unaccountably stopped.

One evening, as my eye glanced at the
advertising columns of the newspaper, it stopped
at the following mysterious announcement. I
beg to state, before quoting it, that on the
previous day the umbrella had come back to
me in a very remarkable manner. I had left it
at a shop to have it newly covered with silk in
the place of gingham. It had come home (as
it appeared to me of its own accord), and had
brought a man with it who waited in the passage
to be paid the price of this alteration, and who
declined to quit the premises without receiving
such price. On being offered the umbrella
instead, he replied, "Blow the umbrella; I've
umbrellas enough that I can't get rid of, I
wants my money." (From the words I have