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immense glee, the sort of consummate trouncing" he should now be able to inflict on that reverend gentleman, the next time he met with him. Mr. Wray only wanted to take one step more after this in the Squire's estimation, to be considered the phoenix of all professors of elocution, past, present, and future and he took it. He actually recollected the production of Mr. Colebatch's play-a tragedy all bombast and bloodshed-at Drury Lane Theatre; and, more than that, he had himself performed one of the minor characters in it!

The Squire seized his hand immediately. This play (in virtue of which he considered himself a dramatic author,) was his weak point. It had enjoyed a very interrupted "run" of one night; and had never been heard of after. Mr. Colebatch attributed this circumstance entirely to public misappreciation; and, in his old age, boasted of his tragedy wherever he went, utterly regardless of the reception it had met with. It has often been asserted that the parents of sickly children are the parents who love their children best. This remark

is sometimes, and only sometimes, true.

Transfer it,

however, to the sickly children of literature, and it directly becomes a rule which the experience of the whole world is powerless to confute by a single exception!

"My dear sir!" cried Mr. Colebatch, " 'your remembrance of my play is a new bond between us ! It was entitled-of course you recollect―The Mysterious Murderess.' Gad, sir, do you happen to call to mind the last four lines of the guilty Lindamira's death-scene? It ran thus, Mr. Wray :

'Murder and midnight hail! Come all ye horrors !

My soul's congenial darkness quite defies ye!

I'm sick with guilt!-What is to cure me ?-This! (Stabs herself.)

Ha ha! I'm better now-(smiles faintly)—I'm comfortable!' (Dies.)

"If that's not pretty strong writing, sir, my name's not Matthew Colebatch! and yet the besotted audience failed to appreciate it! Bless my soul ! (pulling out his watch) "one o'clock, already! I ought to be at home! I must go directly. Goodbye, Mr. Wray. I'm so glad to have seen you, that I could almost thank Daubeny Daker for putting me in the towering passion that sent me here. You

H

remind me of my young days, when I used to go

behind the scenes, and sup with Kemble and Mat

thews. Good-bye, little Annie!

fellow, and I mean to kiss you

I'm a wicked old

some day! Not a

step further, Mr. Wray; not a step, by George, sir; or I'll never come again. I mean to make the Tidbury people employ your talents; they're the most infernal set of asses under the canopy of heaven; but they shall employ them! I engage you to read my play, if nothing else will do, at the Mechanics' Institution. We'll make their flesh creep, sir; and their hair stand on end, with a little tragedy of the good old school. Good-bye, till I see you again, and God bless you!" And away the talkative old squire went, in a mighty hurry, just as he had come in.

"Oh, grandfather! what a nice old gentleman!" exclaimed Annie, looking up for the first time from her lace-cushion.

What per

"What unexampled kindness to me ! fect taste in everything! Did you hear him quote Shakspeare?" cried old Reuben, in an ecstasy. They went on alternately, in this way, with raptures about Mr. Colebatch, for something like an hour.

After that time, Annie left her work, and walked to

the window.

"It's raining-raining fast," she said. "Oh, dear me! we can't have our walk to-day!"

"Hark! there's the wind moaning,” said the old

man. "It's getting colder, too.

going to have a stormy night."

Annie! we are

*

Four o'clock ! And the carpenter still at his

work in the back kitchen.

Faster, "Julius Cæsar;"

faster. Let us have that mask of Shakspeare out of Mr. Wray's cash-box, and snugly ensconced in your neat wooden casket, before anybody goes to bed tonight. Faster, man!-Faster!

CHAPTER VII.

A NIGHT VISIT.

FOR some household reason not worth mentioning, they dined later that day than usual at No. 12. It was five o'clock before they sat down to table. The conversation all turned on the visitor of the morning; no terms in Mr. Wray's own vocabulary being anything like choice enough to characterise the eccentric old squire, he helped himself to Shakspeare, even more largely than usual, every time he spoke of Mr. Colebatch. He managed to discover some striking resemblance to that excellent gentleman (now in one particular, and now in another), in every noble and venerable character, throughout the whole series of the plays-not forgetting either, on one or two occasions, to trace the corresponding likeness between the more disreputable and intriguing per