about in their play boulders weighing several
tons.

There are several kinds of limpets. The
Cape of Good Hope appears to be their
favourite habitat. Great quantities are found
there of shells of large and beautiful limpets.
The common limpet is eaten everywhere.
The Scotch must have deemed it a dainty in
former days, if we are to judge from the
promise of the lover to the lady in the old
song:

I'll pu' the limpets frae the rocks,
To fatten and to fend thee.

However, the Scottish lassies of my
time would not have been tempted by such
fare.

DICK DALLINGTON.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

"No, sir; no train until this evening—six
twenty—slow train, sir; eight forty-five—
mail train, sir. Will you please to dine, sir.
Round of beef—not much cut from the
market-dinner—or like pork, sir; missis
killed a pig yesterday— pig's-fry, chitterlings,
pettitoes, black-puddings." And, as he spoke,
the half-waiter, half-potman of the third-class
inn of a second-class railway-station twirled
his daily napkin with the air of perfect
indifference peculiar to the servants of
railway-inns, whose customers never stop more
than one day, and seldom return.

"No train until eight o'clock—the devil!"
I exclaimed, in a rage, at my own stupidity
in starting, without reading, the road-side
time-tables. No man can make out Bradshaw.

"The devil!" replied the master,
"certainly; what would you prefer, sir?—leg of
a turkey, or try a pork-chop devilled; our
commercial gents are very fond of our devilled
pork-chops."

"Go to the deuce!" I exclaimed, "and
leave me alone," and so saying I banged the
door after him as he slouched out of the
room.

It really was too aggravating to be detained
three hours at a miserable country town on
a damp December day, because the directors
of the Hashington railway could not
agree with the directors of the Fizzington!
Therefore it was arranged that their
respective trains, which appeared on the map
to run continuously, should always set out
two minutes before the passengers from either
could cross to the bridge, which divided the
camps of these iron Guelphs and Ghibellines.

In an ill-omened hour I had consented to
assist at my niece Betty's wedding, had broken
through my rule of not travelling more than
a hundred miles between the thirtieth of
October and the first of May, and found
myself—who can sleep in a railway-carriage
without catching cold?—detained four hours,
with eighty miles to travel after eight
o'clock by rail, besides one hour in an open
dog-cart or two in a damp fly.

The rain poured steadily, slowly down in
a stream, continuous and depressing as the
oratory of a north country M.P. An exploring
walk was out of the question. Half sulky,
half despairing, I thrust my hands into my
pockets, flattened my nose against the
window-pane, and endeavoured to exhaust
my mind in speculating on the possible breeds
of pigs of all sizes and colours that were
luxuriously rooting up a manure-heap, in the
stable-yard fronting the parlour where I was
a prisoner.

It was market-day; but too late to join the
farmers' ordinary—not a bad place to dine at
when wheat is seventy shillings a quarter. The
bar and the long-room (which, on other days,
was the coffee-room,) reeked with damp
commercial gentlemen, corn-dealers, and butchers.
The farmers were moving home in the second
stage of gin-and-water, tobacco, and discussion;
so I had been driven to the genteel
solitude of a parlour to myself. When tired
of my investigations in pigology, confused
between the rival claims of a Fisher Hobbes, an
Earl Radnor and a Prince Albert, a pure
Chinese and a gaunt Irish sow with an endless
brood, I betook myself to the Englishman's—
that is to say, the bachelor Englishman's—
never-failing winter resource, and poked the
fire with a vigour I had not ventured to exert
in my own house for the preceding ten years.

I had demolished a train of camels, and
was watching the rise of the heights of Alma,
when a rattle of wheels and pole-chains,
which clashed with a workmanlike clang, an
authoritative shout of "ostler!" followed by a
tremendous ringing of bells, called me again
to the window. A high-wheeled, mud-stained
phaeton, drawn by a pair of smoking, foaming,
blood-horses, contained a damp pair of
nondescripts, buried under a Mont Blanc of
macintosh capes and horse-rugs. A clumsy
smock-frock groom walked to the horses'
heads, and the twin mountains slowly
descended with the pretended help of the
bare-headed landlord, umbrella in hand.
Rap-rap-tap at my parlour-door, and the
landlord entered in a flurry, followed by the
landlady, sharp and vinegary, as is usually
the case with the wives of husbands of a
mild-ale character.

"Beg pardon—not another private room
with a good fire—Lord Bullfinch's agent and
his lady—quite the gentleman—not expected
—very much obliged." Such were the
disjointed sentences of the joint-stock message.

I am rather a shy man naturally; but, on
this day I was only too much pleased to have
civilised society on any terms, to object to
resigning a private room that I knew would
be charged in the bill four shillings and
sixpence with fire. I retreated to a bed-room
to get rid of the morning beard and arrange
more decently a costume which early winter
hours had made me careless of. On my