s eye flashed fire--he stood erect, and was about to speak; but,
mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and
left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.

* * * * *

"Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, "this is now past a
joke; to-day is the last of my stay; for, notwithstanding the ties which
detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an
absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on
the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress
left. On his answer will my return depend! In the meantime tell me
candidly--I ask it in all seriousness, and as a friend--am I not a dupe
to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in----"

"No, by heaven, Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honor, I am as much
mystified as yourself; and if your servant----"

"Not he:--If there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it."

"If there _be_ a trick? why, Charles, do you, think----"

"I know not _what_ to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so
surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in
my face, and walk away with my trousers; nor was I able to spring from
my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."

"Seaforth!" said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will--But hush! here
are the girls and my father. I will carry off the females, and leave you
a clear field with the governor: carry your point with him, and we will
talk about your breeches afterwards."

Tom's diversion was successful; he carried off the ladies _en masse_ to
look at a remarkable specimen of the class _Dodecandria
Monogynia_--which they could not find--while Seaforth marched boldly up
to the encounter, and carried "the governor's" outworks by a _coup de
main_. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack; suffice
it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that
Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at
a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of
Caroline, whom a vain endeavor to spell out the Linnaean name of a
daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was
soon firmly locked in his own.

What was the world to them,
Its noise, its nonsense and its "breeches" all?

Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night as
ha