eyes about me, in all quarters, at the same time. I
think it cursed unmannerly of you both."

R---- looked at me with one of his comic faces, and I looked at him.

"As to my manners," R---- answered aloud, "whether they be vulgar, or
whether they be genteel, I take no credit to myself; for an extra
allowance was made for my education, that I should be polished brightly
like a gentleman, and if you perceive a failure on that score, the fault
is not mine, but the preparatory school's. Moreover, if a man has any
mental, or personal defect, it is hardly fair to make allusion to it,
and by wounding his feelings to seek the gratification of anger."

R---- gave me a wink, as much as to say, "I have the weather-gage of
him." P---- spoke not in reply; but continued standing at the window,
and, with his back to us, looking out upon the fatal rock and cataract.

"We have left you a couple of eggs," observed R---- pacifically.

"You had better send them back to the hen to be hatched," P---- replied.

"Come, my dear fellow," continued R----, "don't let such a little thing
part us. Your being left on the rock was quite an oversight. Exercise a
christian spirit, and drink this delicious coffee."

Pouring out a cup of coffee, R---- held up the Norwegian wine-bottle of
milk by its long neck, and said to P----, "do you like a little, or a
good deal, of milk?"

"Oh! middling;" and moving from the window, P---- walked towards the
table.

"There," said R----, pushing the cup across to P----, "there's some real
Mocha for you."

P---- raised the cup to his lips.

"Capital!" he exclaimed, taking breath after a long pull.

"So it is!" reiterated R----, expelling a tremendous and satisfactory
cloud of smoke that took the shape of a balloon, and ascending towards
the cottage beams, puzzled me, by its great dilatation, to think, how
such a gigantic volume of sooty exhalation, as Dr. Johnson would say,
could be compressed into a small compass, like R----'s mouth.

When pacification took place, and conciliatory explanations were made
over and over again, R---- and P----, tumbling out their flies,
commenced to repair those that had been damaged by the fish, and
manufactured others, more suitable to the transparent water, and the
timidity of the salmon. While they were thus engaged, I loitered about
in the open air.

The day was hot to oppression; and it required no flight of the
imagination to forget that the country was Norway, and