g,
and believe me yours,

"Adderley."

"There," said she, turning over a number of letters with a mere glance
at their contents, "these are all trash,--shooting and fox-hunting news,
which one reads in the newspapers better, or at least more briefly,
narrated, with all that death and marriage intelligence which you
English are so fond of parading before the world. But what is this
literary gem here? Where did the paper come from? And that wonderful
seal, and still more wonderful address?--'To his Worshipful Excellency
the Truly Worthy and Right Honorable Sir Horace Upton, Plenipotentiary,
Negotiator, and Extraordinary Diplomatist, living at Naples.'"

"What can it mean?" said he, languidly.

"You shall hear," said she, breaking the massive seal of green wax,
which, to the size of a crown piece, ornamented one side of the epistle.
"It is dated Schwats, Tyrol, and begins: 'Venerated and Reverend
Excellency, when these unsymmetrically-designed, and not more
ingeniously-conceived syllables--' Let us see his name," said she,
stop-ping suddenly, and turning to the last page, read, "'W. T.,
_vulgo_, Billy Traynor,--a name cognate to your Worshipful Eminence in
times past.'"

"To be sure, I remember him perfectly,--a strange creature that came out
here with that boy you heard me speak of. Pray read on."

"I stopped at 'syllables.' Yes--when these curiously-conceived
syllables, then, come under the visionary apertures of your acute
understanding, they will disclose to your much-reflecting and
nice-discriminating mind as cruel and murderous a deed as ever a
miscreant imagination suggested to a diabolically-constructed and
nefariously-fashioned organization, showing that Nature in her
bland adaptiveness never imposes a mistaken fruit on a genuine
arborescence'--Do you understand him?" asked she.

"Partly, perhaps," continued he. "Let us have the subject."

"'Not to weary your exalted and never-enough-to-be-esteemed
intelligence, I will proceed, without further ambiguous or
circumgyratory evolutions, to the main body of my allegation. It
happened in this way: Charley--your venerated worship knows who I
mean--Charley, ever deep in marmorial pursuits, and far progressed in
sculptorial excellence, with a genius that Phidias, if he did not envy,
would esteem--'

"Really I cannot go on with these interminable parentheses," said she;
"you must decipher them yourself." Upton took the letter, and read
it, at first hastily, and