"Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, "this is now past a joke; to-day is the last of my stay, for, notwithstanding the ties which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress left. On his answer will my return depend; in the mean time tell me candidly,--I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend,--am I not a dupe to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in----" "No, by Heaven! Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as much mystified as yourself; and if your servant----" "Not he: if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it." "If there _be_ a trick? why, Charles, do you think----" "I know not _what_ to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers; nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow." "Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will--But hush! here are the girls and my father. I will carry off the females, and leave you clear field with the Governor: carry your point with him, and we will talk about your breeches afterwards." Tom's diversion was successful: he carried off the ladies _en masse_ to look at a remarkable specimen of the class _Dodecandria Monogynia_, which they could not find; while Seaforth marched boldly up to the encounter, and carried "the Governor's" outworks by a _coup de main_. I shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack; suffice it that it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent; the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffy-down-dilly had detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in his own. "What was the world to them, Its noise, its nonsense, and its 'breeches' all?"