Napoleons left as a tribute to the managers of the Homburgh Bank; where the discomforts of the return sea-passage first assert themselves, and where couriers and innkeepers are going in for their last grand turn of robbery and swindle. Dreary, dreary, every where! but specially dreary in Hyde Park, at the Piccadilly gates, at which Mr. Prescott leaves his Hansom, and strolls into Rotten Row. A blank desert of posts and rails and dry dusty gravel; a long strip of iron-enclosed sand and grit, with half a dozen figures in the three-quarter mile range to break the dull monotony. As Prescott mooned drearily along, at five-minute intervals he would hear the sound of a horse's hoofs, and turning rapidly, would find some easy-going steed doing its quiet sanitary business for its owner, a man who, either from circumstances or disposition, never quitted London, but was to be seen at some time or other of the day in the Row, no matter what might be the time of year. Interspersed with these were grooms, riding in that groomy undress of wide-awake hat, short, stiff shirt-collar, and tight-fitting, yellow-clay-coloured trousers, trying the wind and bottom of some that were meant to be flyers in the approaching hunting-season; beasts with heavy, strong quarters, long backs, short, sharp heads, and rolling eyes, with a preponderance of white always showing. Country-bred Mr. Prescott, and cannot therefore divest himself of a certain canniness in the matter of horseflesh: now and then he leans over the rail to follow the progress of a horseman flying past, with his hands well down, and every muscle of his steed brought into splendid play; or the healthy gymnastics of a valetudinarian, who had learned exactly the utmost amount of exercise to be derived from his horse as compared with the least amount of discomfort to be endured by himself. But these do not rivet his attention; and he passes on until he is nearly abreast of the Serpentine, when, looking back, he sees a blue skirt fluttering in the wind, and in an instant recognising its wearer, pulls up by the rails and waits her advent. It does not take long for that chestnut mare to cover the distance, albeit she is being ridden from side to side, and is evidently receiving her "finishing" in the elegancies of the _manège_ In less than two minutes she is pulled up short by the rails where Prescott is standing, and her rider, Kate Mellon, with the colour flushing in her cheeks, with her eyes aglow, with her hair a trifle dishevelled from the exercise, is sitting bolt upright, and with the handle of her riding-whip giving the young gentleman a mock salute. "Servant, colonel!" says she. "How do you do, Kate?" says Prescott, leaning forward and touching the neat little white cuff on her wrist; "I thought I should find you here." "More than I thought of you!" says the lady. "Why ain't you counting up those figures, and adding and subtracting, and all the rest of it you do in your office, eh?"