of them seem of our provoking, and part and parcel of a matured and long-meditated policy.'

"Benissimo!" cried the Minister, rubbing his hands in delight. "If we reform, it is the Whigs have reformed us. If we fall, it is the Whigs have crushed us."

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'Caraffa, we are told," continued Maitland, sees the danger, but is outvoted by the Queen-Dowager's party in the Cabinet-not to say that from his great intimacy with Pietri many think him more of a Muratist than a Bourbon.' "

"Per bacco! when your countryman tries to be acute, there is nothing too hazardous for his imagination: so, then, I am a French spy!"

"What you say of the army,' read on Maitland, "is confirmed by our other reports. Very few of the line regiments will be faithful to the Monarchy, and even some of the artillery will go over. As to the fleet, Martin tells me they have not three seaworthy ships in the fifty-seven they reckon, nor six captains who would undertake a longer voyage than Palermo. The three-decker Monarca was afraid to return a salute to the Pasha, lest her old thirty-two pounders should explode; and this is pretty much the case with the Monarchy-the first shock must shake it, even though it only come of blank cartridge.

"While events are preparing, renew all your remonstrances; press upon Caraffa the number of untried prisoners, and the horrid condition of the prisons. Ask, of course in a friendly way, when are these abuses to cease? Say that great hopes of amelioration-speak generally were conceived here on the accession of the new King, and throw in our regrets that the liberty of the press with us will occasionally lead to strictures whose severities we deplore, without being able to arraign their justice; and, lastly, declare our readiness to meet any commercial exchanges that might

promise mutual advantage. This will suggest the belief that we are not in any way cognisant of Cavour's projects. In fact, I will know nothing of them, and hold myself prepared, if questioned in the House, to have had no other information than is supplied by the newspapers. Who is Maitland ? None of the Maitlands here can tell me.'" This sentence he read out ere he knew it, and almost crushed the paper, when he had finished, in his passion.

"Go on," said Caraffa, as the other ceased to read aloud, while his eyes ran over the lines. "Go on.'

"It is of no moment, or at least its interest is purely personal. His Lordship recomends that I should be bought over, but still left on intimate relations with your Excellency."

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And I see no possible objection to the plan.'

"Don't you, sir?" cried Maitland, fiercely; "then I do. Some little honour is certainly needed to leaven the rottenness that reeks around us."

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There is only a warning not to see the Count of Syracuse, nor any of his party, who are evidently waiting to see which horse is to win. Ah, and here is a word for your address, Carlo! 'If Caffarelli be the man we saw last season here, I should say, Do not make advances to him; he is a ruined gambler, and trusted by no party. Lady C believes in him, but none else!'"

This last paragraph set them all a-laughing, nor did any seem to enjoy it more than Caffarelli himself.

"One thing is clear," said Car

Brizzi, but he is seldom correct, said the 18th."

66 That Irish fellow of ours, Maitland, is positive it will be by the thirteenth at latest. By the way, when I asked him how I could reward this last piece of service he rendered us in securing these despatches, his reply was, 'I want the cordon of St Januarius.' I of course remonstrated, and explained that there were certain requisites as to birth and family, certain guarantees as to nobility of blood, certain requirements of fortune. He stopped me abruptly, and said, 'I can satisfy them all; and if there be any delay in according my demand, I shall make it in person to his majesty.'

"Well," cried Caffarelli-" well, and what followed?"

"I yielded," said the Prince, with one of his peculiar smiles. "We are in such a perilous predicament, that we can't afford the enmity of such a consummate rascal; and then, who knows but he may be the last knight of the Order!" In the deep depression of the last words was apparent their true sincerity, but he rallied hastily, and said, "I have sent the fellow to Bosco with despatches, and said that he may be usefully employed as a spy, for he is hand-and-glove with all the Garibaldians. Surely he must have uncommon good-luck if he escapes a bullet from one side or the other."

"He told me yesterday," said Caffarelli, "that he would not leave

Maitland looked up from a letter that he was deeply engaged in, and so blank and vacant was his stare that Caffarelli repeated what the Minister had just said. "I don't think you are minding what I say. Have you heard me, Maitland?"

"Yes s; no- -that is, my thoughts were on something that I was reading here."

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Is it of interest to us?" asked Caraffa.

"None whatever. It was a private letter which got into my hands open, and I had read some lines before I was well aware. It has no bearing on politics, however;" and, crushing up the note, he placed it in his pocket, and then, as if recalling his mind to the affairs before him, said: "The King himself must go to Sicily. It is no time to palter. The personal daring of Victor Emmanuel is the bone and sinew of the Piedmontese movement. Let us show the North that the South is her equal in everything."

"I should rather that it was from you the advice came than from me," said Caraffa, with a grin. "I am not in the position to proffer it."

"If I were Prince Caraffa I should do so, assuredly."

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"You would not, Maitland," said the other, calmly. You would not, and for this simple reason, that you would see that, even if accepted, the

I know his condition to have been a mere assumption, the man himself and his talents are only a mockery-only a mockery!' Hard words these, Carlo, - very hard words!

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And then she says: "If I had only known him as a passing acquaintance, and thought of him with the same indifference one bestows on such, perhaps I would not now insist so peremptorily as I do on our ceasing to know him; but I will own to you, Mark, that he did interest me greatly. He had, or seemed to have,'- -this, that, and t'other," said he, with an ill-tempered haste, and went on. "But now, as he stands before me, with a borrowed name and a mock rank'

-There is half a page more of the same trash; for this gentle lady is a mistress of fierce words, and not over-merciful, and she ends thus:-'I think, if you are adroit, you can show him, in declining his proffered civility, that we had strong reasons for our refusal, and that it would be unpleasant to renew our former acquaintance.' In fact, Carlo, she means to cut me. This woman, whose hand I had held in mine while I declared my love, and who, while she listened to me, showed no touch of displeasure, affects now to resent the accident of my birth, and treat me as an impostor! I am half-sorry that letter has not reached its destination; ay, and, strange as you will think it, I am more than half tempted to write and tell her that I have read it. The story of the stolen despatch will soon be a newspaper scandal, and it would impart marvellous interest to her reading it when she heard that her own 'secret and confidential' was captured in the same net."

"You could not own to such an act, Maitland.”

"No. If it should not lead to something further; but I do yearn to repay her. She is a haughty adversary, and well worth a vengeance." What becomes of your fine maxim, 'Never quarrel with a woman,' Maitland?"

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"When I uttered it, I had never loved one," muttered he; and they walked on now in silence.

Almost within earshot-so close, indeed, that had they not been conversing in Italian, some of their words must have been overheard by those behind-walked two other friends, Damer and Tony, in close confab.

"I must telegraph F. O.," said Skeffy, "that the bag is missing, and that Messenger Butler has gone home to make his report. Do you hear me?"

A grunt was the reply.

"I'll give you a letter to Howard Pendleton, and he'll tell what is the best thing to be done.”

"I suspect I know it already," muttered Tony.

"If you could only persuade my Lord to listen to you, and tell him the story as you told it to me, he'd be more than a Secretary of State if he could stand it."

"I have no great desire to be laughed at, Skeffy."

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Not if it got you out of a serious scrape-a scrape that may cost you your appointment?"

"Not even at that price."

"I can't understand that; it is quite beyond me. They might put me into Joe Miller to-morrow, if they'd only gazette me Secretary of Embassy the day after. But here's the hotel; a good sleep will set you all right; and let me see you at breakfast as jolly as you used to be."

The dawn was scarcely breaking as Tony Butler awoke and set off to visit the ships in the port whose

flags proclaimed them English. There were full thirty, of various sizes and rigs; but though many

were deficient in hands, no skipper seemed disposed to accept a young fellow who, if he was stalwart and well grown, so palpably pertained to a class to which hard work and coarse usage were strangers.

"You an't anything of a cook, are you?" asked one of the very few who did not reject his demand at once.

"No," said he, smiling.

"Them hands of yours might do something in the caboose, but they ain't much like reefing and clewing topsails. Won't suit me.' And thus discouraged, he went on from one craft to the other, surprised and mortified to discover that one of the resources he had often pictured to his mind in the hours of despondency was just as remote, just as much above him, as any of the various callings his friends had set before him.

Not able to be even a sailor! Not fit to serve before the mast! Well, perhaps I can carry a musket; but for that I must return to England."

He fell to think of this new scheme, but without any of that hope that had so often coloured his projects. He owed the service a grudge; his father had not been fairly treated in it. So at least, from his very childhood, had his mother taught him to believe, and in consequence vehemently opposed all his plans to obtain a commission. Hard necessity, however, left no room for mere scruples; something he must do, and that something was narrowed to the one single career of a soldier.

He was practical enough in a certain sense, and he soon resolved on his line of action; he would reserve just so much as would carry him back to England, and remit the remainder of what he had to his mother.

This would amount to nigh eighty pounds-a very considerable sum to one whose life was as inexpensive as hers. The real difficulty was how to reconcile her to the

thought of his fallen condition, and the hardships she would inevitably associate in her mind with his future life. "Ain't I lucky," cried he in his bitterness, and trying to make it seem like a consolation— "Ain't I lucky, that, except my poor dear mother, I have not one other in the whole world to care what comes to me-none other to console, none other before whom I need plead or excuse myself! My failure or my disgrace are not to spread a wide-cast sorrow. They will only darken one fireside, and one figure in the corner of it."

His heart was full of Alice all the while, but he was too proud to utter her name even to himself. To have made a resolve, however, seemed to rally his courage again; and when the boatman asked him where he should go next, he was so far away in his thoughts that he had some difficulty to remember what he had been actually engaged in.

" Where to?"

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Well, I can't well tell you," said he, laughing. Isn't that schooner English-that one getting under way yonder? Shove me aboard of her."

"She's outward bound, sir."

"No matter, if they'll agree to take me," muttered he to himself.

The craft was "hauling short" on the anchor as Tony came alongside and learned that she was about to sail for Leghorn, having failed in obtaining a freight at Naples; and as by an accident one of the crew had been left on shore, the skipper was too willing to take Tony so far, though looking, as he remarked, far more like a swell landsman than an ordinary seaman.

Once outside the bay, and bowling along with a smart breeze and a calm sea, the rushing water making pleasant music at the bow, while the helm left a long white track some feet down beneath the surface, Tony felt, what so many others have felt, the glorious elation of being at sea. How many a care "blue water"