place was taken in the diligence, and I wished to be in Paris before the inhabitants of that great metropolis had risen from their beds. To resist payment would produce altercation, perhaps violence; to struggle with four ruffians would have been useless; and to be dragged to a police-station would have been humiliating and inconvenient.

"While sternly debating the matter with myself, in came a meagre figure, wrapped up in a coarse great-coat, with a cap on his head and a lantern in his hand, to announce to us that the diligence was ready. I rose directly, threw down a napoleon, or twenty franc piece, on the table, and prepared to depart; but no sooner was the bill discharged, than the cabaretier, the chasseur, the two gamesters, and the meagre man in the great-coat, all informed me that the diligence would not leave Pontoise for more than an hour. The entrance of the man with the great-coat and the lantern was a mere ruse to make me pay the bill.

"Determined to quit the cabaret, I made for the door, but found it fastened. Without waiting for assistance, I began to undo the bolts, and soon succeeded in getting into the street, but the night was too dark to proceed alone. I stepped back to ask the chasseur if he meant

to accompany me; and found him tying up a bundle, putting into it part of a bottle of brandy for which I had paid, and making an appointment with his friends to meet him, when they would drink up the brandy. Where this meeting was to be I did not know: dark thoughts rushed through my mind.

"The chasseur led me up one street and down another, apparently pretending that he had lost his road; this seemed to me to be a part of his plan; he evidently wished to delay the time of our departure. Fearing that we might be too late at the office of the diligence, and not without apprehension of being joined by his suspicious companions, the cabaretier and the gamesters, I sharply asked him what he meant by such conduct; and taking the lead, fortunately found my way to the office.

"The inn-yard, a striking scene, is now vividly present to my remembrance.

It was

a spacious area, a part of which was crowded with chariots, cabriolets, and voitures, with uncouth lumber lying about. The buildings round were high, with an old-fashioned gallery and jutting windows. A half-starved looking stable-man- -an English hostler would have been ashamed of him-was in attendance. The large and dirty horn lantern which dangled from his

hand, made the objects around dimly visible. The feeble and flickering light arrayed the place with mysterious loneliness.

"In vain I looked around for the diligence; no diligence was there. In vain I sought the office door to obtain information; the office was closed, the scarecrow of an hostler was the only human being to be seen on the premises, with the exception of the postilion, who was holding a muttered conversation behind the voiture with my half-drunken companion, the chasseur. The valet d'ecurie, or hostler, at last went to the stable, brought out two horses, and began to harness them to an old crazy voiture, when I was informed that the voiture would convey us two or three miles on the road to a place where the diligence would pass.

"This was an arrangement that at first I felt determined to resist; but a moment's consideration told me that I should be in equal danger if I remained in the streets, or even if I returned to the cabaret. Demanding to see the office-keeper or the landlord, I thundered at the door of the auberge, but all in vain; the meagre - looking Frenchman told me that he durst not call his master. I then required to know the exact time at which the diligence would be at the place to which the voiture was

to convey us, and consulting my watch, discovered that of necessity, by the man's own account, the diligence must pass the place halfan-hour before we could arrive at it. Things seemed now drawing to a crisis; and never, in the course of my life, was I so much excited as at this moment; the past rushed upon me; the behaviour of the chasseur on the road, his conduct at the gaming-house, his roguery at the cabaret, the appointment he had made with his companions to join him, and his pretending to lose his way;-all this put together boded no good, and disposed my mind to believe that evil was intended me.

"Here was I alone, in the middle of a dark night, to trust myself in a voiture with a most suspicious companion, with the certainty of being too late for the diligence, and with the momentary expectation of being joined by the host and gamesters left behind us at the cabaret.

"A spirit of determination suddenly came upon me, and no sooner did the chasseur enter the carriage, than I resolved on self-defence, if attacked. It is an easy thing when a danger is past to perceive how we ought to have acted; but the darkness of the night, and a vague surmise of intended violence, wrought upon me,

and raised within me a stern spirit of resistance. The false step which I had made in keeping company with an unworthy companion had led me into errors; and brought me into the perilous dilemma in which I then found myself. All this flashed across my mind; but there was no undoing what had been done.

"Already had the postilion mounted his horse, encasing his legs in his enormous jack boots; already had I set my foot on the steps to enter the voiture, when a trampling under the inn gateway attracted my attention. In a moment I stepped back, and crossed the yard to the gateway. Two figures approached, handkerchiefed and great-coated for travel with a goodly appendage of trunks and portmanteaus, partly borne by themselves, and partly carried by a porter. They were going to Paris: one of them was a German; his English was, if possible, worse than my French; but that did not signify; we contrived to understand each other; and, in five minutes, it was arranged that we should all travel together in the voiture.

"The chasseur, after a private parley with the postilion and valet d'écurie, once more entered the voiture, and doggedly seating himself in a corner, with his brandy-bottle behind