pounds for it, at an auction, and I warn you that
it is worth just thrice that sum. Still, if you would prefer
ready-money, as in your circumstances I dare say you do,--he felt in
his breeches pocket--'here are the five sovereigns, and--once more--
go in peace.'

THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century there lived at Dolphin
House, Troy, a Mr Samuel Pinsent, ship-chandler, who by general
consent was the funniest fellow that ever took up his abode in the
town. He came originally from somewhere in the South Hams, but this
tells us nothing, for the folk of the South Hams are a decent, quiet
lot, and you might travel the district to-day from end to end without
coming across the like of Mr Pinsent.

He was, in fact, an original. He could do nothing like an ordinary
man, and he did everything jocosely, with a wink and a chuckle.
To watch him, you might suppose that business was a first-class
practical joke, and he invariably wound up a hard bargain by slapping
his victim on the back. Some called him Funny Pinsent, others The
Bester. Few liked him. Nevertheless he prospered, and in 1827 was
chosen mayor of the borough.

In person, Mr Pinsent was spare and diminutive, with a bald head, a
tuft of badger-gray hair over either ear, and a fresh-coloured,
clean-shaven face, extraordinarily wrinkled about the face and at the
corners of the eyes, which twinkled at you from under a pair of
restless stivvery eyebrows. You had only to look at them and note
the twitch of his lips to be warned of the man's facetiousness.

Mr Pinsent's office--for he had no shop-front, and indeed his
stock-in-trade was not of a quality to invite inspection--looked out
upon the Town Square; his back premises upon the harbour, across a
patch of garden, terminated by a low wall and a blue-painted
quay-door. I call it a garden because Mr Pinsent called it so; and,
to be sure, it boasted a stretch of turf, a couple of flower-beds, a
flagstaff, and a small lean-to greenhouse. But casks and coils of
manilla rope, blocks, pumps, and chain-cables, encroached upon the
amenities of the spot--its pebbled pathway, its parterres, its raised
platform overgrown with nasturtiums, where Mr Pinsent sat and smoked
of an evening and watched the shipping; the greenhouse stored sacks
of ship-bread as well as pot-plants; and Mrs Salt, his housekeeper
(he was unmarried), had attached a line to the flagstaff, and a