It may be doubted whether a large proportion of what man is prone to call happiness is secured by any mortal, in so compressed and complete a form, as by the reasonably weary wayfarer during an evening spent in a cheery old-fashioned inn. The conditions of enjoyment are superbly complete. The body, healthily tired, craves utter repose, supplemented by the creature-comforts so plentifully accorded to a solvent lodger. The mind, ever a comparative reflex of the organic register of the body, is so far dominated as to lie luxuriously and ruminatively quiescent. The great ocean of the future, with possible armadas, Columbus discoveries, whirlpools, and typhoons, lies mist-shrouded and peaceful-murmurous. The mild lustre of fairly-purchased present enjoyment is shed lamp-like over the whole being. The difficult past, the uncertain future, are shut out from the mental view as completely as are the dark streets and stranger groups of a city, by shrouding curtains, when the interior life is alone visible. Care, save by improbable hazard, is thrust out till the morn. Till then the joys of unpalled appetite. Slumber, soft-touched, silent nurse, points with warning finger to the couch. Reverie may be fondled, darling nymph, without the rebuke of cold-eyed prudence. The wayfarer is a monarch for that evening only. His subjects haste to do his bidding. His purse contains a compressible coronet, investing him with regal dignity and absolute power, while the talisman coin is potent. Burly Sam Johnson loved ‘to take his ease at an inn.’ Was there an added luxury in the uncounted cups of tea therein possible, dissevered from the fear of accidents to Mrs. Thrale’s table-cloth? The supper had come and gone, and Mr. Neuchamp was sleepily watching the glowing embers in the fireplace with a strong mental deflection towards bed, when the pistol-crack of stock-whips, the lowing of cattle, and a faint echo of the far pervading British oath prepared him for a new and probably interesting arrival. His first impulse was to rush wildly into the road, in order to see a drove of cattle by moonlight, but having accidentally observed that the stockyard was very near the house, he restrained himself and awaited the landlord’s irrepressible report. In a quarter of an hour that sympathetic personage, evidently the bearer of important news, entered the sitting-room. ‘Hear the whip, sir? that was Ironbark Ike, with a couple o’ hundred head of fat cattle of the () and Bar brand. Splendid lot. Bum character, old Ike; been a stockman and drover this fifty year. Like to see him, sir? he’s a-smoking his pipe in the kitchen.’ Like to see him? Of course Mr. Neuchamp would like to see him, though he mildly assented, and did not betray the tremulous eagerness with which he mentally grasped the chance of beholding a stockman of half a century’s experience, in his eyes little less than a sheik of the Bedaween.