nd when I closed the
last page and resumed my chair, he sprang from his place to claim the
platform.

"Stop," cried Hipp, in his hard nasal tone, striding forward; "you have
interrupted the lecturer after giving your parole; we recall our
promise, as you have not stood by yours. Janitor, put out the lights!"

The bald old gentleman quietly rose. "In England," he said, "we give
everybody fair play; tokens of assent and dissent are commonly made in
all our public meetings; let us have a hearing for our townsman."

"Certainly," I replied, giving him my hand at the top of the stairs,
"nothing would afford me more pleasure."

The man in the monkey-jacket then made a sweeping speech, full of loose
charges against the Americans, and expressive of sympathy with the
Rebellion; but, at the finishing, he proposed, as the sentiment of the
meeting, a vote of thanks to me, which was amended by another to include
himself. Many of the people shook hands with me at the door, and the
bald old gentleman led me to his wife and daughter, whose benignities
were almost parental.

"Poor young man!" said the old lady; "a must take care of 'is 'ealth;
will a come hoom wi' Tummas and me and drink a bit o' tea?"

I strolled about the place for twenty-four hours on good terms with many
townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and business, was posting me against
all the dead walls of a farther village. Again and again I sketched the
war-episodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by
degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as steadily
lost money. The houses were invariably bad; we had the same fiery
discussions every evening, but the same meagre receipts, and in every
market town of northwestern Lancashire we buried a portion of our little
capital, till once, after talking myself hoarse to a respectable
audience of empty benches, Hipp and I looked blankly into each other's
faces and silently put our last gold pieces upon the table. We were
three thousand miles from home, and the possessors of ten sovereigns
apiece. I reached out my hand with a pale smile:--

"Old fellow," I said, "let us comfort ourselves by the assurance that we
have deserved success. The time has come to say good by."

"As you will," said Hipp: "it is all the fault of this pig-headed
nation. Now I dare say if we had brought a panorama of the war along, it
would have been a stunning success; but standing upon high literary and
forensic ground, of