ess, when I find what kind of stuff the good citizens here are made
of.'

'I reckon,' his friend returned, 'that they are made of pretty much the
same stuff as other folks, if they would but own it, and not set up on
false pretences.'

'In good faith, that's true,' said Martin.

'I dare say,' resumed his friend, 'you might have such a scene as that
in an English comedy, and not detect any gross improbability or anomaly
in the matter of it?'

'Yes, indeed!'

'Doubtless it is more ridiculous here than anywhere else,' said his
companion; 'but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I
myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the
first that you came over in the steerage, for I had seen the list of
passengers, and knew it did not comprise your name.'

'I feel more obliged to you than before,' said Martin.

'Norris is a very good fellow in his way,' observed Mr Bevan.

'Is he?' said Martin drily.

'Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or anybody
else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to him IN FORMA
PAUPERIS, he would be all kindness and consideration.'

'I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find such a
character as THAT,' said Martin. Neither he nor his friend said anything
more on the way back; each appearing to find sufficient occupation in
his own thoughts.

The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal,
was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with
a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end
of the board Mrs Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking
tea; out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted
and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three
flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of
different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in
broad day.

These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when
Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they stopped
directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they
went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the
teapot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their
chilling coldness.

'Have you been to meeting, Mrs Brick?' asked Martin's friend, with
something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.

'To lecture, sir.'

'I b