UNPLEASANT as was the situation in which Lewis was left at the end of the last chapter, we can scarcely imagine that any of our readers, however they may be accustomed to look on the “night side of nature,” can have coolly made up their minds to the worst, and settled to their own dissatisfaction that he fell a victim to the poacher’s gun. We say we cannot imagine such a possibility; not because we have any very deep reliance on the tender-heartedness of all our fellow-creatures, seeing that this tale may fall into the hands of a poor-law guardian or a political economist; that a butcher may read it fresh from the shambles, or a barrister after defending some confessed murderer. But we feel certain, butcher or barrister, law-giver or guardian must alike perceive that, as we are writing the life and adventures of Lewis Arundel, we cannot commit manslaughter without adding thereunto suicide; or, to speak plainly, we cannot kill Lewis without docking our own tale; therefore, the utmost extent for which our most truculent reader can possibly hope must be a severe gun-shot wound, entailing a lingering illness and a shattered constitution. But even these pleasant and reasonable expectations are doomed to meet with disappointment, the fact being that almost at the moment in which “long Hardy” (for he it was) levelled his gun at Lewis’s retreating figure, his quick ear had caught a sound betokening the advance of some person through the bushes in his immediate vicinity; and neither wishing to encounter any of the gamekeeper’s satellites, nor considering the deed he had meditated exactly calculated to be performed before any, even the most select audience, the poacher slowly recovered his gun and proceeded to convey himself away, after a singular snake-like fashion of his own, reserving to himself the right of shooting his supposed enemy at some more convenient season. In the meantime Lewis walked quietly on, unconscious of the danger he had escaped, until a turn in the road brought him in sight of his companions. During the course of their homeward walk Lewis questioned the gamekeeper as to his intentions concerning the poachers to whose proceedings he had that morning gained a clue.