Sir JOHN SPRATT had fashions that were peculiarly his own. Vain it were to inquire how, from the long-perished SPRATTS that went before him, he drew that form of human mind which was his. Laws that are hidden from our prying eyes ordain that a man shall be the visible exemplar of vanished ages, offering here and there a hook of remembrance, on which a philosopher may hang a theory for the world's admiring gaze. Far back in the misty past, of which the fabulists bear record, there have swum SPRATTS within this human ocean, and of these the ultimate and proudest was he with whose life-story we are concerned. It was his habit to carry with him on all journeys a bulky note-book, the store in which he laid by for occasions of use the thoughts that thronged upon him, now feverishly, as with the exultant leap of a rough-coated canine companion, released from the thraldom of chain and kennel, and eager to seek the Serpentine haunts of water-nymphs, and of sticks that fell with a splash, and are brought back time and again whilst the shaken spray bedews the onlookers; now with the staid and solemn progression that is beloved of the equine drawers of four-wheeled chariots, protesting with many growls against a load of occupants. He had met JOANNA. They had conversed. "An empty table, is it not?" said she. "Nowhere!" said he, and they proceeded. His "Nowhere!" had a penetrating significance--the more significant for the sense that it left vague. And so the marriage was arranged, the word that was to make one of those who had hitherto been two had been spoken, and the celebrating gifts came pouring in to the pair. Sir JOHN walked home with triumph swelling high in his heart. Overhead the storm-clouds gathered ominously. First with a patter, then with a drenching flood, the prisoned rain burst its bars, and dashed clamouring down to the free earth. He paused, umbrellaless, under a glimmering lamp-post. The hurrying steeds of a carriage, passing at great speed, dashed the gathered slush of the street over his dark-blue Melton over-coat. The imprecations of the coachman and his jeers mingled strangely with the elemental roar. Sir JOHN heeded them not. He stood moveless for a space, then slowly drawing forth his note-book, and sharpening his pencil, he wrote the following phrase:--"Laid _Brother to Banjo_, one, two, three, 5 to 4." CHAPTER IV. A year had gone by, and with the spring that whispered softly in the blossoming hedge-rows, and the melancholy cry of the female fowl calling to her downy brood, JOANNA had learnt new lessons of a beneficent life, and had crystallised them in aphorisms, shaken like dew from the morning leaf of her teeming fancy.