Down went the stage,--up came Bill, blackened and bruised a little to be sure, but not to signify a jot; he had struck his head in falling against the side of the shaft and was stunned by the blow. It so happened, by one of those wonderful contingencies which sometimes occur when, in human eyes, escape seems impossible, that he fell in a corner protected by the tough metallic vein which projected a little above the level of the bottom. The explosion bent this by its force, instead of shattering it like the surrounding rock, and turned the ledge over him. This in a great measure defended him from the stones which fell back again into the mine. The shock aroused him from the stunning effect of the blow which he had received in falling, and he shouted heartily, “All right, John! all right!” His reward soon came--Polly and the children arrived safe and well. When she wept with joy and thanked him in her own simple way for having saved her husband for her, he was so happy in their happiness that he would readily have jumped into the bursting mine again, rather than they should be parted any more. When our narrator, the mining agent, left Peru, the brothers were preparing to return to England; they had got on well enough, and had saved sufficient money to enable them to stock a little farm, near the village in Cornwall where they were born. By the time this long story was told, it was past the usual hour of going to our berths; but I am ashamed to say that several of our party had already taken a large instalment of their night’s rest, and knew no more about our friend William Wakeham than of the man in the moon. THE DOG OF ALCIBIADES. In Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades the following passage occurs:-- “Alcibiades had a dog of an uncommon size and beauty, which cost him seventy _minæ_, and yet his tail, which was his principal ornament, he caused to be cut off. Some of his acquaintance found great fault with his acting so strangely, and told him that all Athens rang with the story of his foolish treatment of the dog. At which he laughed, and said, ‘This is the very thing I wanted; for I would have the Athenians talk of this, lest they should find something worse to say of me.’”