Scarcely was he gone, when Benoni, the little invalid (a precocious boy of six), stole from behind a window-curtain, and ran up to his mother, with a large pin in his hand, saying, "Dear ma', I did it all-Benoni did it with this!"

On inquiry, it proved that Benoni, at the arrival of Grunter, had hid under his father's table, and, passionately fond of that kind father, had, when he heard the quarrel between him and Grunter, plunged into the leg of the latter a pin he had just picked up, and forthwith noiselessly hid himself and his weapon behind the curtain.

Mrs. Fitzcribb had missed her darling, even in all the hurry of her arrangements for Grunter's reception; but she had fancied he was perhaps gone down to Sally-for Sally, generally at war with the rest of the family, was very fond of the little bright-eyed invalid : twice she had treated him to a peep-show, once to Punch; often had she given him a rosy-cheeked apple, a gingerbread wife from a fair, or a paper of lollypops; and often, when

he had been every where sought in vain, he was found on Sally's lap, by her large kitchen fire.

Mrs. Fitzcribb tried to reprove him, but laughter prevented her.

"Why did you do it? Naughty boy," she said, at length.

"Benoni's a good boy, and loves papaand nasty, ugly great man scolded papa."

It was a rule with the Fitzcribbs never to scold Benoni, so, as he began to cry at being called naughty, and as his fault sprang from an excess of filial piety, his mother caught him to her bosom, and kissed his pale, wan

cheek, again and again.

And when, on Fitz

cribb's return after the opera, she let him into the ludicrous secret, he, convinced that Grunter would never forgive them for having unconsciously promoted his making so great a fool of himself, as to have called in a surgeon for a scratch of a pin, and for having let him fancy himself in danger from its effects, resolved not to undeceive him, but to let him undergo the course of medicine, which they both agreed

could not but be serviceable to the inflated old pedant, and would perhaps clear his head for the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History!

When the melancholy cortège, attending the wounded and terrified Grunter, arrived at St. James's Square, Fitzcribb, after seeing his co-partner installed in his room, under the direction of Mr. Jobb, availed himself of the carriage Mr. Lindsay had sent back to fetch his old usher, and had himself conveyed to the opera.

The house was brilliantly attended. The only beaux of the Lindsay party were Sir Peter Riskwell, Julian, and De Villeneuve. Old Mr. Lindsay, when he heard the strange story Fitzcribb had to tell, was seized with a

real anxiety about his old instructor, and immediately left the Opera House, and returned home to offer his services. No representations of Jobb's (whom he met on the stairs) could prevent his going into Grunter's room to inquire of himself how he felt. He found him in bed, a white cotton nightcap drawn over his eyes, and all of his face that could be seen, of a green pallor, to which the black streak, the result of the attack made upon him in Fitzcribb's book-closet by Hume and Smollet, and which crossed his face diagonally, added new horrors. Well might he look pale, for Jobb (a Sangrado in his way) had already cupped and bled him, and covered his leg with leeches. He had given him a strong emetic and an opiate, besides applying a blister to the "wound."

Mr. Lindsay was inexpressibly shocked at the sudden and awful change two or three hours had made in his old friend.

"Can I not see the wound?" he asked.

Impossible," replied Jobb. "To prevent inflammation, I have surrounded it with a