It is the 20th day of January; here, in England, the most consistently detestable month in the year. The good Januaries of a British octogenarian's life might be counted upon the thumbs of that octogenarian's hands. The favoured inhabitants of London have breakfasted and lunched by gaslight; have groped their way along their dirty streets through a fog of as thick and close a fabric as the furs gathered round their chilled throats; have, even within their houses, seen each other dimly across a hideous yellow vapour that kills their expensive flowers, and makes their unwilling palm-trees droop in homesick sadness. There is no fog about the Grand Hotel, Mustapha Supérieur, Algiers; no lightest blur of mist to dim the intensity of the frame of green in which its white face is set. It is not so very grand, despite its unpromising big name, as it stands high aloft on the hillside, looking out over the bay and down on the town, looking down more immediately upon tree-tops, and on the Governor's summer palace. It is an old Moorish house, enlarged into an hotel, with little arched windows sunk in the thick walls, with red-tiled floors, and balconies, with low white balustrades of pierced brick, up which the lush creepers climb and wave--yes, climb and wave on this 20th of January. From the red-floored balcony over the creepers, between the perennial leafage of the unchanging trees, one can daily descry in the azure bay the tiny puff of smoke that tells that the mail steamer from Marseilles has safely breasted the Gulf of Lyons, threaded her away among the Isles, and brought her freight of French and English and American news to the hands and ears of the various expectant nationalities. To-day, blown by a gently prosperous wind, the boat is punctual. It is the _Eugène Perrère_, the pet child of the Transatlantic Company, the narrow and strong-engined little vessel which is wont to accomplish the transit in a period of time less by an hour than her brother craft. To-day she has brought but one guest to the Grand Hotel, who, having left the bulk of his luggage to be struggled for by Arabs, and by the hotel-porter at the Douane, arrives at the modest Moorish-faced hostelry, having, with British mercifulness, walked up the break-neck green lane that leads from the steep main road in order to spare the wretched little galled, pumped horse that has painfully dragged him and his bag from the pier. He has travelled straight through from London--fifty-five hours without a pause--so that it is not to be wondered at that his thoughts turn affectionately towards a wash and a change of raiment. Having extracted from the case of unclaimed letters in the bar two or three that bear the address of James Burgoyne, Esq., he is ushered to his room by the civil little fussy Italian landlord, who, in order to enhance his appreciation of the apartment provided for him, assures him, in voluble bad French, that only yesterday he had been obliged to turn away a party of eight.