gress.

Hopping Dick speedily made his appearance to arrange the table for their
repast, while William amused himself by eliciting information from him
of a various nature, by questions put to the fellow as he continued to
hover between the coffee-room and the pantry.

"Have you had any exploits lately, Dick," said he, "similar to that
which I witnessed on the first night I stopped here? You remember when I
mean," continued William, as he remarked the man's abstraction, as if in
thought to what or which exploit he had referred; "I mean when you had
the table smashed."

"By the gent as tried to take his horse over it?" enquired the
salient-gaited waiter.

"Exactly," replied his interlocutor.

"No, sir; we ain't had no more just like that 'un lately, not sich
roarers. I s'pose ye know, sir, that 'ere gent, Mr. Smith, what the
'orse belonged to, is dead?"

"No," replied William, "I do not. Pray, how might that have happened?"

"Why, you see, sir, he stopped here for about a week, for he was
uncommon fond of a spree, and he never reached home after that. His
'orse comed on to the station one day without him, and with the saddle
twisted right round, and hanging under his belly. So ye see, sir, his
people fancied he had got a 'buster' somehow, and went a-search of him,
but couldn't find him nohow. They comed in here then, and found out what
way he took; and, with some black fellows, they, after a while, found
his track, and run it down till they found him as quiet as you please on
the broad of his back, with his head cracked. He was a bit fresh when he
left here, so they thought he might a' been going home, some'ut mad
like, and got a 'spill,' which cook'd him. Howsomdever, he spent his
money like a real gent, and I'm precious sorry he's dead; for he was
uncom'n good to me, and a good 'un for custom to the master; the likes
of him ain't seen every day."

Even grieved as William was to hear of the melancholy and untimely end
of such a man; cut off in the prime of life while in the mad pursuit of
a delirious career, he could not help indulging in a smile at the
strange sophistry of his companion, who imagined that a lavish waste of
substance was the constituted act of a gentleman; and at the selfishness
of the fellow who regretted the death of the man only in so far as it
affected the pocket of himself and his employer. But he reflected it was
the way of the world; clothe the feeling how he would; and he felt no
doubt