amusing themselves with Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet; when the door leading to the admiral's dressing-room suddenly opened, and the scene which offered itself to the visitors' view, was too romantic to forbid immediate and resolute interference.

Charles had doft his hat, but not his wig. Caroline was reading the part of Juliet, and Charles recited the part of Romeo; and she had just pronounced—

"I would not for the world they saw thee here," when the admiral and Mr. Leaf stopped Charles from replying

"I have a hat and wig to hide me from their sight."

The steps with which the admiral helped himself to the volumes that loaded the upper shelves of his library, were of a very substantial form and make; they were a kind of spiral, consisting of some dozen of steps, well hedged in by a neat but secure hand-rail on both

sides, and the top consisted of a platform of about three feet square, which, from its railing, looked like an orator's rostrum; the castors on which it moved rendered its site in any part of the room easy, even to female strength: on these steps, and in this rostrum, and over against the door by which the admiral and Mr. Leaf entered, was Caroline elevated in the balcony scene in Capulet's garden, as the representative of Juliet, while Charles on his knees at the library table, pictured to the admiral and Leaf's amazement the locum tenens of the "tassel-gentle, sweet Montague."

The words which Caroline uttered, were too distinctly and too audibly pronounced to mislead the ears of the admiral and Mr. Leaf, and the attitudes of Charles and Miss Springfield were too impassioned to suspend the father's decision for a single moment;

accordingly, with an alertness which danger brings into action, the admiral, whose strength was but little impaired by three-score years, seized the poor unfortunate Doctor Boston by the collar, and called aloud for assistance, whilst the active Mr. Leaf assisted the terrified Miss Springfield to descend from the rostrum.

Two servants ran into the room, and received Charles from the admiral. To have offered resistance might have realised Juliet's words,

"If they do see thee, they will murder thee."

A third servant was sent for a constable, but his assistance and authority were not needed.

Caroline had leapt from the top of the steps, and fell at her father's feet. in all the agony of distraction; and the strength of the servants could not

keep from his knees the afflicted lieu

tenant.

"He'll not run away, papa; my dear papa! forgive me this once; it's Charles, it's Charles himself, papa! O! papa, O!"

All this was said before the astonished parent could raise his daughter; and its effect threw the admiral into the most violent paroxysm his frame could bear without dissolution,

It was not Charles that now became an object of the servant's care; their master required all their attention, and there was nobody about him more officious in administering relief than the helpless lieutenant.

Caroline too, for filial tenderness triumphed over personal suffering, clung round his neck, imploring his mercy; and would have prevented for a long time the resuscitation of her

agonizing parent, but for the pressing entreaties of Charles.

As soon as the admiral had sufficiently recovered to be able to distinguish his daughter, he stretched out his arms, and Caroline sunk into his embrace and wept aloud.

Mr. Leaf desired the servants might withdraw, and begged Charles to be seated, for the whole scene was too . unequivocal to allow him to doubt that he, whom Miss Springfield called Charles, was unknown to the admiral.

But Caroline on her knees, clinging to the neck of her sire, and weeping the prayer of forgiveness, rendered of no avail the entreaty of Mr. Leaf. It was long before this exchange of parental and filial affection and grief could subside; but when both were exhausted, the admiral's presence of mind returned; and, forcing from the ground his penitent daughter, he