You must all three be somewhat fatigued by the exercise of so much critical acumen. So do you, Talboys and Seward, unbend the bow at another game of Chess; and you, Buller, reanimate the jaded Moral Sentiments by a sharp letter to Marmaduke, insinuating that if he don't return to the Tents within a week, or at least write to say that he and Hal, Volusene and Woodburn, are not going to return at all, but to join the Rajah of Sarawak, the Grand Lama, or Prester John--which I fear is but too probable from the general tone and tenor of their life and conversation for some days before their Secession from the Established Camp--there will be a general breaking of Mothers' hearts, and in his own particular case, a cutting off with a shilling, or disinheriting of the heir apparent of one of the finest Estates in Cornwall. But I forget--these Entails will be the ruin of England. What! Billy, is that you? BILLY. Measter, here's a Fish and a Ferocious. TALBOYS. Ha! what Whappers! BULLER. More like Fish before the Flood than after it. SEWARD. After it indeed! During it. What is Billy saying, Mr North? That Coomerlan' dialect's Hottentot to my Devonshire ears. NORTH. They have been spoiled by the Doric delicacies of the "Exmoor Courtship." He tells me that Archy M'Callum, the Cornwall Clipper, and himself, each in a cow-hide, having ventured down to the River Mouth to look after and bale Gutta Percha, foregathered with an involuntary invasion of divers gigantic Fishes, who had made bad their landing on our shores, and that after a desperate resistance they succeeded in securing the Two Leaders--a Salmo Salar and a Salmo Ferox--see on snout and shoulder tokens of the Oar. Thirty--and Twenty Pounders--Billy says; I should have thought they were respectively a third more. No mean Windfall. They will tell on the Spread. I retire to my Sanctum for my Siesta. TALBOYS. Let me invest you, my dear sir, with my Feathers. BULLER. Do--do take my Tarpaulin. SEWARD. Billy, your Cow-hide. NORTH. I need none of your gimcracks--for I seek the Sanctum by a subterranean--beg your pardon--a Subter-Awning Passage. SCENE II. SCENE--_Deeside._ TIME-_Seven_ P.C. NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS. NORTH. How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking, or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically, on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the day. TALBOYS. Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir--think of---- NORTH.