At all events, the contents of this document, like those mysterious presentiments of evil which sometimes are said to precede calamity, hung like a weight upon his mind, view them as he might. He became nervous, depressed, and gloomy, pleaded illness as an apology for not dining abroad; remained alone and at home during the whole evening, but arose the next morning in better spirits, and when our friend Tom Norton presented himself, he had regained sufficient equanimity and composure to pay proper attention to that faithful and friendly gentleman. Now Tom, who resolved to make an impression, as it is termed, was dressed in the newest and most fashionable morning visit costume, drove up to the hall-door at that kind of breakneck pace with which your celebrated whips delight to astonish the multitude, and throwing the reins to a servant, desired, if he knew how to pace the horse up and down, to do so; otherwise to remember that he had a neck. The servant in question, a stout, compact fellow, with a rich Milesian face and a mellow brogue, looked at him with a steady but smiling eye. “Have a neck, is it?” he exclaimed; “by my sowl, an' it's sometimes an inconvenience to have that same. My own opinion is, sir, that the neck now is jist one of the tenderest joints in the body.” Norton looked at him for a moment with an offended and haughty stare. “If you are incapable of driving the landau, sir,” he replied, “call some one who can; and don't be impertinent.” “Incapable,” replied the other, with a cool but humorous kind of gravity; “troth, then it's disgrace I'd bring on my taicher if I couldn't sit a saddle an' handle a whip with the best o' them. And wid regard to the neck, sir, many a man has escaped a worse fall than one from the box or the saddle.” Norton drew himself up with a highly indignant scowl, and turning his frown once more upon this most impertinent menial, encountered a look of such comic familiarity, easy assurance, and droll indifference, as it would not be easy to match. The beau started, stared, again pulled himself to a still greater height--as if by the dignity of the attitude to set the other at fault--frowned more awfully, then looked bluster, and once more surveyed the broad, knowing face and significant laughing eyes that were fixed upon him--set, as they were, in the centre of a broad grin--after which he pulled up his collar with an air--taking two or three strides up and down with what he intended as aristocratic dignity-- “Hem! ahem! What do you mean, sir?” To this, for a time, there was no reply; but there, instead, were the laughing fascinators at work, fixed not only upon him, but in him, piercing him through; the knowing grin still increasing and gathering force of expression by his own confusion. “Curse me, sir, I don't understand this insolence. What do you mean? Do you know who it is you treat in this manner?”