pugilistic landlords had orders never to pronounce his name, but to call him "Guv'nor;" it would not do for an official high in her Majesty's service to be recognised in such quarters. Before his aristocratic friends obtained for him his commissionership, his name was one of the most common current amongst the Fancy; but since then he had eschewed actual presence at the ring, as he had blue bird's-eye handkerchiefs, cigars in the daylight, and nodding acquaintance with broughams in the park. "_Il faut se ranger_," he used to say; "it would never do for those young fellows down at the Office to think that I was or ever had been a fast lot; and those confounded Radical papers, they made row enough about the appointment, and they'll always be on the look-out to catch me tripping." He little knew that his fame had preceded him to the Tin-Tax Office; that all the old clerks were prepared to receive him with something between fear and disgust, all the young ones with unmingled admiration; that daily bulletins of his dress and manners were circulated amongst the juniors, and that those who could afford it dressed at him to a man. He was four-and-thirty when he got his appointment, and he had held it about two years. There was even betting that the promotion would "go in the office;" that Mr. Simnel, the secretary, a very clever man, would get it; that the vacancy would not be filled up; and various other rumours. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer felt that Mr. Simnel had been going a little too much ahead lately, acting on his own responsibility; and as the widow of the cabinet minister (who owned a borough in Devonshire) and the bishop concurrently attacked the Premier, that nobleman gave way, and Charles Beresford exchanged the dreariness of Bruges, in which dull Belgian city of refuge he had been for some months located, for a seat in the board-room at Rutland House. His uncle and aunt, through their respective solicitors, bought up his outstanding debts, and settled them at a comparatively low rate (his Oxford ticks had been settled years ago out of his mother's income); and he came into a thousand a year, paid quarterly, free and unencumbered. A thousand a year, in four cheques on the Bank of England in January, April, July, and October, ought to be a sufficiency for an unmarried man; but with Charles Beresford, as with a good many of us, the mere fact of the possession of money gave rise to a wild desire for rushing into unlimited expense. To belong to three clubs--the Beauclerk in Pall Mall, aristocratic and exclusive; the Minerva (proposed thereat by the bishop), literary and solemn; the Haresfoot, late and theatrical;--to have capital rooms in South Audley Street; to keep a mail-phaeton and pair, with a saddle-horse and a hunter during the season; to give and join in Greenwich and Richmond dinners; to be generous in the matter of kid-gloves and jewelry; to have a taste (and to gratify it) in choice wines; to make a yearly