"That we must part," returned Mr. PETERS, calmly straightening an angle in the rim of his hat. "You named an hour for my nocturnal escape--quarter-past Twelve. I fled the Residence at that unseemly hour, though another maiden had previously invited me to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I went, and walked straight into the arms of the unsleeping Southern Confederacy, who was inebriated at the time, and conducted me to the penal pork-packing establishment. Enough! we part. I go to Danville with you, but only as an ordinary acquaintance of chilling reserve." "Why BOB, what can you mean?" ejaculated _Libby_, to whom this remarkable speech was not particularly lucid; "it was not my fault that you were taken. If you had gone at quarter-past Twelve, as I told you, all would have been well. Oh, BOB, when JOCKO told me next morning that he had waited for you a whole hour in the hall in vain, and when ma and I found that you had really gone at the wrong time, I sat right down and cried my eyes out." "The wrong time!" exclaimed Mr. PETERS, striding suddenly toward the mirror. "Impossible! Observe this repeater of mine, which is a reliable time-piece. On the night in question, this repeater was plainly before me, hanging on this gas bracket, before this looking-glass." Here Mr. PETERS illustrated his assertion by suspending his watch from the bracket, under which it spun feebly for a moment. "At the very instant of my waking from a temporary slumber, I caught sight of this same repeater in the glass, and--why! what's this?" In a moment every vestige of resentment had faded from the features of Mr. BOB PETERS, and he stood staring at the reflection of his watch in the glass with the look of a man in the last stage of wonder. LIBBY timidly drew near and placed a hand on his arm. "What's the matter, dear?" "What time is it now by the repeater?" asked Mr. PETERS, excitedly, but without moving his eyes. "Why, it's ten minutes past Ten," replied LIBBY, glancing at the face of the watch as it appeared in the mirror, and wondering what would come next. "Look again!!" thundered Mr. PETERS. "Why," repeated LIBBY, half-frightened, "it's ten minutes past Ten." Mr. BOB PETERS deliberately took down his watch and pointed convulsively at its face with one finger. The time was ten minutes _of_ Ten! Mr. PETERS' first act was to clasp the maiden to his bosom and kiss her unceremoniously. Then releasing her, he took two steps in a popular break-down and burst into a stentorian peal of laughter. "I shall have to call Pa," said poor LIBBY. "Not a bit of it!" shouted BOB, ceasing his Terpsichoreanism for a moment; "don't you see the joke? It's all in the looking-glass, my pet. When I thought it was a quarter past Twelve and fled the residence, it was really a quarter _of_ Twelve--don't you see? The looking-glass _reversed the hands on the watch_!" And so it was, _mon ami_. Hold your own time-piece with its face to a mirror, and you will "see the point."