Mr. Wheatley had set about providing for himself as soon as we arrived; Zed had rushed away with my valise, where, and about what, I knew not; and I stood solitary for a moment or two, in the midst of a spacious, low-ceiled drawing-room, filled with as many nicknacks as would have bedizened the boudoir of a London lady. At length, a very neat little boy, of fourteen years of age, with his snowy white jacket and trousers and apron, contrasting magnificently with the jetty hue of his hands and face, came in and asked, with a grace quite oriental, whether I was the Honourable Sir Richard Conway. "Honourable, I trust I am," I replied, "and my name is Richard Conway." "Ah, then, here is your room, sir," answered the boy. And he led me into a very handsome bedroom, immediately out of the drawing-room, where I found every possible convenience that either London or Paris could supply. It seemed to have been the pleasure of Mr. Byles to accumulate under the roof of a very unpretending dwelling, the form and structure of which I suspect it would be impossible to describe, all the luxuries of a dozen different climates, and to enjoy them, and make his friends enjoy them, without those conventional restraints with which they are usually associated. Zed was already there, having arrived at my quarters by some undiscovered passages, and was busy in arranging all the toilette apparatus of Palmer and Savory, upon principles conceived by himself, partly indoctrinated by me. I threw myself into a chair, and, for a moment or two, gave myself up to meditation, thinking--"This afternoon all these appliances for luxury and comfort--to-morrow, perhaps, stretched upon that bed with a pistol-shot through my heart!" I am not much given to such considerations; but there are moments when they will force themselves upon me, and I end by exclaiming, "What a farce is life!" Starting up with this conviction upon me, as I knew it must be near the dinner-hour, I proceeded to change my dress, and get rid of the soil and dust which the roads, now thoroughly dry, had left upon me. Not twenty minutes after, my little black friend made his appearance again, with a tumbler full of a bright yellow liquid, upon a silver salver, saying,-- "Dinner will be ready in five minutes, sir." "What is this, my friend!" I asked, taking up the tumbler. "Apple-Jack, sir," replied the boy. "And am I to drink this before dinner?" "If you please, sir," he answered, in a decidedly affirmative tone. So I drank it, and found it by no means unpleasant. I suppose in these regions, where vast tracks of swamp and forest-ground still remain unreclaimed, spreading around a sort of miasma, such kind of stimulating drinks, which would kill us in the old world, are not without their use; and certainly they do not seem to produce the same stimulating effects that they would in Europe.