without his knowledge.'

"'Well, he's not too dear at that,' said I. 'Now let me see and speak
with him, Barry, and if I like him, you shall have a fifty-pound note
for him. You know well enough that I needn't pay a sixpence. I have
fellows in my employment would track him out if you were to hide him
in one of his rocket-canisters; so just be reasonable, and take a good
offer.'

"He was not very willing at first, but he yielded after a while, and so
I became the owner of the Professor, for such they called him."

"Had he no other name?"

"Yes; an old parrot, that he had as a pet, called him Tom, and so
we accepted that name; and as Tom, or Professor Tom, he is now known
amongst us."

"Did you find, after all, that you made a good bargain?"

"I never concluded a better, though it has its difficulties; for, as
the Professor is almost an idiot when perfectly sober, and totally
insensible when downright drunk, there is just a short twilight interval
between the two, when his faculties are in good order."

"What can he do at this favorable juncture?"

"What can he not? is the question. Why, it was he arranged all the
scores for the orchestra after the fire, when we had not a scrap left of
the music of the 'Maid of Cashmere.' It was he invented that sunrise, in
the last scene of all, with the clouds rolling down the mountains, and
all the rivulets glittering as the first rays touch them. It was he
wrote the third act of Linton's new comedy; the catastrophe and all were
his. It was he dashed off that splendid critique on Ristori, that set
the town in a blaze; and then he went home and wrote the parody on
'Myrra' for the Strand, all the same night, for I had watered the
brandy, and kept him in the second stage of delirium till morning."

"What a chance! By Jove! Stocmar, you are the only fellow ever picks up
a gem of this water!"

"It's not every man can tell the stone that will pay for the cutting,
Paten, remember that. I 've had to buy this experience of mine dearly
enough."

"Are you not afraid that the others will hear of him, and seduce him by
some tempting offer?"

"I have, in a measure, provided against that contingency. He lives here,
in a small crib, where we once kept a brown bear; and he never ventures
abroad, so that the chances are he will not be discovered."

"How I should like to have a look at him!"

"Nothing easier. Let us see, what o'clock is it? Near five. Well, this
is not an unfavorable