least much pleasure from your various narratives,"
said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of his manner.

"And now, gentlemen," concluded Somerset, "let us separate. I hasten to
put myself in fortune's way. Hark how, in this quiet corner, London
roars like the noise of battle; four million destinies are here
concentred; and in the strong panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to
the bearer, I am about to plunge into that web."

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions.
Fearing, apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr.
Somerset should throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon
the English people to remember with more gratitude the services of
the police; to what unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are
called; against what odds of numbers and of arms, and for how small
a reward, either in fame or money: matter, it has appeared to the
translators, too serious for this place.

CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE:

THE SQUIRE OF DAMES

Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney, where
he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the people of
the house. To this remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in
the morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot. He was a
young man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body;
bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses. In happier days
he would have chartered a cab; but these luxuries were now denied him;
and with what courage he could muster he addressed himself to walk.

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along
the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the
warmth and all the brightness of the July day already shone upon the
city. He walked at first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing
and repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into the
labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually mastered by the
silence. Street after street looked down upon his solitary figure, house
after house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop
displayed its shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile
he steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through this
encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.

"Here," he reflecte