y reflection on the shortness of life, are the little calamities of the
body? What is imprisonment or persecution or cold or hunger? By the by,
you did not forget to put the sandwiches into my coat-pocket!"

"Hush!" whispered Ned, and he moved on involuntarily; "I see a man at
the other end of the street."

"Let us quicken our pace," said Tomlinson; and the pair proceeded
towards the river.

"And now," began Ned, who thought he might as well say something about
himself; for hitherto Augustus, in the ardour of his friendship, had
been only discussing his own plans,--"and now,--that is to say, when I
leave you,--I shall hasten to dive for shelter, until the storm blows
over. I don't much like living in a cellar and wearing a smock frock;
but those concealments have something interesting in them, after all!
The safest and snuggest place I know of is the Pays Bas, about Thames
Court; so I think of hiring an apartment underground, and taking my
meals at poor Lovett's old quarters, the Mug,--the police will never
dream of looking in these vulgar haunts for a man of my fashion."

"You cannot then tear yourself from England?" said Tomlinson.

"No, hang it! the fellows are so cursed unmanly on the other side of the
water. I hate their wine and their parley woo. Besides, there is no fun
there."

Tomlinson, who was absorbed in his own thoughts, made no comment on his
friend's excellent reasons against travel; and the pair now approached
the brink of the river. A boat was in waiting to receive and conduct to
the vessel in which he had taken his place for Calais the illustrious
emigrant. But as Tomlinson's eye fell suddenly on the rude boatmen and
the little boat which were to bear him away from his native land; as
he glanced, too, across the blue waters, which a brisk wind wildly
agitated, and thought how much rougher it would be at sea, where "his
soul" invariably "sickened at the heaving wave,"--a whole tide of deep
and sorrowful emotions rushed upon him.

He turned away. The spot on which he stood was a piece of ground to be
let (as a board proclaimed) upon a building lease; below, descended the
steps which were to conduct him to the boat; around, the desolate space
allowed him to see in far and broad extent the spires and domes and
chimneys of the great city whose inhabitants he might never plunder
more. As he looked and looked, the tears started to his eyes, and with
a gust of enthusiasm, little consonant with his tempe