s Mr. Morton?"

"At your commands, sir," said Roger, rising involuntarily.

"A word with you, then, on business."

"Business!" echoed Mr. Morton, turning rather pale, for he began to
think himself haunted; "anything in my line, sir? I should be--"

The stranger bent down his tall stature, and hissed into Mr. Morton's
foreboding ear:

"Your nephews!"

Mr. Morton was literally dumb-stricken. Yes, he certainly was haunted!
He stared at this second questioner, and fancied that there was
something very supernatural and unearthly about him. He was so tall, and
so dark, and so stern, and so strange. Was it the Unspeakable himself
come for the linendraper? Nephews again! The uncle of the babes in the
wood could hardly have been more startled by the demand!

"Sir," said Mr. Morton at last, recovering his dignity and somewhat
peevishly,--"sir, I don't know why people should meddle with my family
affairs. I don't ask other folks about their nephews. I have no nephew
that I know of."

"Permit me to speak to you, alone, for one instant." Mr. Morton sighed,
hitched up his trousers, and led the way to the parlour, where Mrs.
Morton, having finished the washing bills, was now engaged in tying
certain pieces of bladder round certain pots of preserves. The eldest
Miss Morton, a young woman of five or six-and-twenty, who was about to
be very advantageously married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals
and played the violin (for N----- was a very musical town), had
just joined her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with
variations," out of a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful
cry under the awakening fingers of Miss Margaret Morton.

Mr. Morton threw open the door with a grunt, and the stranger pausing
at the threshold, the full flood of sound (key C) upon which "the Swiss
Boy" was swimming along, "kine" and all, for life and death, came splash
upon him.

"Silence! can't you?" cried the father, putting one hand to his ear,
while with the other he pointed to a chair; and as Mrs. Morton looked
up from the preserves with that air of indignant suffering with which
female meekness upbraids a husband's wanton outrage, Mr. Roger added,
shrugging his shoulders,--

"My nephews again, Mrs. K!"

Miss Margaret turned round, and dropped a courtesy. Mrs. Morton gently
let fall a napkin over the preserves, and muttered a sort of salutation,
as the stranger, taking off his hat, turned to mother and daughter one
of