he really enjoyed it, which, however there is no doubt he did. He only interrupted my tutor twice or thrice, in order to make some pertinent interrogation, and when all had been described (including a slight sketch of Marmaduke's position), he sat for a little silent and noiseless, tapping his wine-glass with his forefinger, and staring into the fire.

"Well, Mr. Townshend, and what is your opinion?" inquired Mr. Gerard a little impatiently. "Do you think that this Lost Sir Massingberd is alive or dead?"

"That is a question which a fool would answer at once, sir, but a wise man would take some time to reply to," returned the Bow Street runner coolly, "But one thing you may depend upon, that he will not be 'Lost' long. I have blotted that word out of my dictionary. I know Sir Massingberd Heath well, or, at least, I did know him, and that is a great advantage to start with; he was not a man, I should think, to change with age. Tall figure and strong; large piercing eyes; much beard; a mouth that tells he likes to have his own way; and on his forehead a mark as if the devil had kicked him."

"That is excellent," cried Mr. Gerard; "you could not mistake him for any other man in London."

"He is not in London, sir," observed the runner dogmatically. "If he were mixing with the lot that he used to be amongst, I should surely have heard of it; and if he is with people much beneath him in station, I should have learned it still more certainly. As for that, however, he is not one—if I remember him right—to hide himself, or work much underground."

"If you mean that he would not stoop to deception, Mr. Townshend," remarked my tutor gravely, "I am afraid you are mistaken; the very money which, as I have said, he obtained from me upon the day of his disappearance, was dishonourably come by. His pretext of the Methodists having bidden for a piece of ground upon which to build a chapel within the Park, and almost opposite the Rectory, was, I have since discovered, entirely false; and I cannot but fear that some judgment has overtaken this unhappy man."

Here, I am sorry to say, that Mr. Clint and Mr. Gerard looked at one another in rather a comic manner, and the Bow Street runner helped himself to a glass of the particular with an open chuckle.

"Well, sir," responded that gentleman, "you see Judgments isn't much in my way. When I catches a chap, he generally knows its judgment and execution too; but barring that, I doubt whether there is much 

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