her old eyes grew dim; but she was a brave
woman, and Martha, housemaid, was a dull one.

"Did Mr. Evans not succeed in describing the
person who bought the coat, then?"

"He thinks not; but he says he should know
him immediate, if he saw him. The strange
gentleman didn't seem over-pleased that his
memory was so short; but lor', who's to know
all about the eyeses and the noses of everybody
as comes to buy a coat, or whot not? — partic'lar
if you don't know as he's been a committen of a
murder. If you did, why, you'd look at him
closer like, I should say!"

"Has Mr. Downing got the paper with the
murder of the foreigner in it?" asked Mrs.
Brookes.

"Yes, he have; he's just been reading it all
over again in the hall. And he says as how
master's in a brown study, as he calls it; only
it's in the dining-room, and he's sure as the
finding-out people has put it into his hands."

"When he has done with the paper, ask him
to let me see it, Martha. Very likely this stranger's
visit has nothing to do with the matter. Downing
finds out things that nobody else can see."

Martha was an admirer and partisan of Mr.
Downing, from the humble and discreet distance
which divides a housemaid from a butler, and
she did not like to hear his discretion aspersed.

"It looks as if he was right this time,
however," she replied; "though it wasn't Tim the
tinker as stole Sir Thomas's spoons, which Mr.
Downing never had a good opinion of him; but
when there ain't nothing clearer than the person
who was seen at the eating-house with the
victim" (Martha "took in" the Hatchet of
Horror every week, and framed her language on
that delightful model) "had on a coat as Evans
made, it looks as if he wasn't altogether in the
wrong, now don't it, Mrs. Brookes?"

Mrs. Brookes could not deny that it looked
very like that complimentary conclusion, and her
brave old heart almost died within her. But she
kept down her fear and horror, and dismissed
Martha, telling her to bring her the paper as
soon as she could. The woman returned in a
few moments, laid the newspaper beside Mrs.
Brookes, and then went off to enjoy a continuation
of the gossip of the servants' hall. Very
exciting and delightful that gossip was, for
though the servants had no inkling of the terribly
strong interest, the awfully near connexion,
which existed for Poynings in the matter, it was
still a great privilege to be "in" so important an
affair by even the slender link formed by the
probable purchase of a coat at Amherst by the
murderer. They enjoyed it mightily; they
discussed it over and over again, assigning to the
murdered man every grade of rank short of
royalty, and all the virtues possible to human
nature. The women were particularly eloquent
and sympathising, and Martha "quite cried," as
she speculated on the great probability of there
being a broken-hearted sweetheart in the case.

In the housekeeper's room, Mrs. Brookes sat
poring over the terrible story, to which she
had listened carelessly on the previous day, as
the servants talked it vaguely over. From the
first words Martha had spoken, her fears had
arisen, and now they were growing every instant
to the terrible certainty of conviction. What if
the wretched young man, who had already been
the cause of so much misery, had added this
fearful crime to the long catalogue of his follies and
sins?

All the household sleeps, and the silence of
the night is in every room but one. There Mrs.
Brookes still sits by the table with the
newspaper spread before her, lost in a labyrinth of
fear and anguish; and from time to time her
grief finds words, such as:

"How shall I tell her? How shall I warn
her? O George, George! my boy! my boy!"

          JOE MILLER AND HIS MEN.

THE name of Joseph (more succinctly and
familiarly Joe) Miller brings back before us,
life-size, the face of an honest, grave, respectable,
taciturn English comedian, in hat and wig of
the period (Georgio Secuudo Gloriosissimo
Regnante). Not one of the light-heeled play-acting
crew, but a performer who trod the boards of
Drury, heavily, in Colley Cibber's day, with a
proper sense of the sobrieties and gravities of
broad comic life.

The want of family papers is one to be
lamented in the conduct of many biographical
inquiries of the highest moment, and perhaps no
more striking instance could be found of the loss
posterity has suffered under this head than the
case of the late Mr. Joseph Miller. The
materials for this biography are so distressingly
slight, that Miller lives for us only in a few
straggling and insulated facts. We know nearly
as little of him as Mr. Steevens knew of William
Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon; though
not quite so little. We have plays by Mr.
Shakespeare, and if we have none by Mr. Miller,
we have playbills and the book which passes
current as Joe Miller's Jests. This book is itself a
joke. As there are notorious wits, so there are
men notorious for never having made a joke
themselves, nor seen the point of another man's
joke, in their lives. Mr. Miller's celebrity sprang
from the latter cause. Mr. Miller, a man of
social habits, fond of company, of tobacco, and
of good cheer, seldom spoke and never laughed.
In the scale of literary attributes, his abilities
pointed to zero; for he could neither read nor
write, and he learned the parts with which he
adorned the stage, orally: his wife proving
herself the better half by reading them to him.
Yet he held a good place among such sterling
theatrical geniuses of the pre-Garrick school
as Barton Booth, Wilkes, Dogget, Cibber,
Norris, Pinkethman, Spiller, and others,
immortalised in the Tatler and Spectator, and
while Sir Richard Steele was one of the royal
patentees. He filled, with general applause,
the parts of Clodpole, in the Amorous Widow,
and Ben, in Love for Love. In the King and
the Miller of Mansfield, the Miller was