appeared singularly unwilling to face death at that particular epoch, and contrived accordingly by some means or other to render themselves invisible. In vain did Millar try the choicest spinnies, in vain did he scramble through impassable hedges, where gaps there were none, rendering himself a very pin-cushion for thorns; in vain did he creep along what he was pleased to term dry ditches, till from the waist downwards he looked more like a geological specimen than a leather-gaitered and corduroyed Christian; still the obdurate pheasants refused to stand fire, either present or prospective (gun or kitchen), and at the end of three hours’ hard walking through the best preserves the disconsolate gamekeeper had only succeeded in bagging a brace. At length completely disheartened, he came to anchor on a stile, and produced a flask of spirits, with the contents of which (after fruitlessly pressing Lewis and Walter to partake thereof) he proceeded to regale himself. Finding himself the better for this prescription, he shouted to a dishevelled individual yclept the beater, who for the trifling consideration of eighteenpence per diem and a meal of broken victuals, delivered himself over to the agreeable certainty of being wet _to_ the skin, and scratched and torn _through_ it, with the by no means remote contingency of getting accidentally shot into the bargain. The creature who appeared in answer to this summons, and who in spite of the uncomfortable description we have given of his occupation, seemed to enjoy his day’s sport excessively, was too old for a boy and too young for a man. His face was, of course, scratched and bleeding, and his elf locks, drenched with the hoar frost, now melted into a species of half-frozen gelatine, gave him a strange, unearthly appearance. His clothing, if rags which looked like the cast-off garments of an indigent scarecrow deserved the name, was so tattered and torn, that the fact of their hanging upon him at all was calculated to shake one’s faith in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, till one gained a clue to the mystery by recollecting the antagonistic principle “attraction of cohesion;” the only personal attraction, by the way (save a pair of clear grey eyes giving a shrewd expression to his face), that our friend possessed.