Mr. Sparkes pinched the arm of Sir Sidney
Smith. " Give your word till to-morrow
morning," he whispered.

"Well, so be it," pursued the Commodore.
"Till to-morrow morning I will give my word
to remain quiet. But after that I shall court
the Muses as much as I please."

" I wish to-morrow morning were this day
month,'' murmured Citizen Lasne, as he bid
the prisoners good night, and left them to their
repose.

"To-morrow morning may bring forth
great things, Sir Sidney," remarked Mr.
Sparkes, suddenly rising from the body-
servant into the friend. "You have kept your
word in neither escaping nor planning escape.
I have kept the word you gave for me in not
escaping. We shall see, we shall see."

The historian relates, with what accuracy
I know not, that when Citizen Lasne had
retired for good for the night, Mr. Sparkes
took off no less than five waistcoats, and also
relieved his arms and legs from much
superfluous padding; that underneath his red hair
he had some closely-cropped silky black
locks; that the freckles on his face were
removable by no stronger cosmetic than
ordinary soap and water; and that in less than
one quarter of an hour after the departure of
the gaoler, the bluff English body-servant
had unaccountably assumed the likeness of
an accomplished French gentleman.

The next morning, very early, a yellow post-
chaise, drawn by four horses, drove up to the
great door of the Temple. On the box sat
two individuals, who at a glance could be
recognised as gendarmes in plain clothes.
Two more gendarmes, but in uniform,
descended from the chaise, and assisted to
alight no less a personage than Citizen Auger,
adjutant-general of the army of Paris.

Shortly afterwards, the Commodore was
sent for to the prison lodge, and there he was
shown an order, signed by the Minister of the
Interior, for the transfer of the persons of Sir
Sidney Smith and his servant, John Sparkes,
Anglais, to the military prison of the Abbaye.

"And many a poor fellow have I seen
transferred to the prison of the Abbaye, who
has only left it to be shot in the Plaine de
Grenelle," murmured Lasne. " However, tout
est en règle,—all is correct. I will just enter
the warrant in the books, if you will be kind
enough to sign a receipt for the bodies of the
prisoners, Citizen Auger."

The citizen signed his name to the prison
register, " Auger, Adjutant- General,"
followed by a tremendous paraphe or flourish.
He declined the escort of six men which
Lasne was kind enough to offer him, saying
that the four gendarmes were sufficient, and
that, besides, he would depend on the honour
of Sir Sidney Smith not to compromise him.
The Commodore begged Lasne to accept the
remainder of his stock of port wine, shook
hands with him, took an affecting leave of
poor Captain Wright, and with Sparkes
entered the post-chaise. Citizen Auger
followed; the two gendarmes in plain clothes
mounted the box, and the carriage drove
away. For aught Sir Sidney Smith knew, he
was riding to his death.

The next morning, the newspapers teemed
with accounts of the audacious escape of
Commodore Sir Sidney Smith from the prison
of the Temple, by means of a forged order of
transfer. Citizen Adjutant-General Auger
was no other than the proscribed emigré, the
Marquis de Rochecotte, and the gendarmes
were doubtless agents of the indefatigable
Pitt-et-Coburg. As for Mr. John Sparkes, it
was subsequently elicited that he was a
certain Count de Tergorouac, a nobleman of
Britanny, who had resided for a long time in
England, and to whom it had luckily
occurred, when taken prisoner, to assume the
disguise of an Englishman.

The French police performed prodigies of
strategy to arrest the fugitives, but all in
vain. They reached Calais, crossed the
Channel in a smuggling-vessel, and arrived
safely in England.

As for Citizen Lasne, he could come to no
harm; for, though the order was forged, the
signature of the minister appended to it was
undoubtedly genuine. It was never known
by what stratagem the signature had been
obtained. The fat citizen finished the
commodore's port wine gaily, and drank his
health, and that of " ce digne Spark," in their
now unoccupied chambers in the Temple.

CHIPS.

STEALING A CALF'S SKIN.

AUBREY, a gossipping antiquary, who has
preserved some curious facts and half-facts,
relates of Shakespeare that, when a boy, he
exercised his father's trade of a butcher,
"and when he killed a calf he would do it in
a high style, and make a speech." How the
boy Shakespeare addressed a calf as he skinned
it, it is not difficult to imagine—perhaps in
the King Cambyses vein (certainly a high
style), perhaps in a vein like that in which
Burns indulged when he turned up a mouse's
nest with his plough (certainly a touching
style). What value Shakespeare set upon a
calf's skin we may gather from the contemptuous
clothing assigned to Austria by
Constance and Falconbridge—

And hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs.

But how little could he have foreseen what
punishment was to be assigned in this England
of his and ours to a poor woman for the
crime of stealing a single calf's skin. Had
he been possessed of second-sight, he would
have felt as the famous John Howard felt,
whose active sympathy with a poor woman
over-punished for stealing one calf's skin we
are enabled to publish for the first time, and
in his own words. The case has escaped the