The friend to check-strings seemed thunderstruck by the explosion. He screwed himself round to take a look at his neighbour--didn’t like him at all--turned back again--stole another look--liked him worse than before--then looked for the third time, and hated him. His seat became uneasy--he had found a choke-pear, very like a hedgehog, and very like a bull terrier, he could neither kill it nor let it alone. It clung to him like a burr which you pull off your hat that it may stick on your right-hand glove, thence to be transferred to the left-hand one, and so on alternately till you finally get rid of it on your pantaloons. The “Lord forbid,” like Macbeth’s “Amen,” stuck in his throat--it buzzed in his head like a fly in a horse’s ear. However, he held his uncomfortable peace till silence itself became insupportable. At last he broke out: “Humph! Doubtful as I am whether common coach conversation ought to be tied by strict rules of logic, still I cannot suppress the remark, that when one gentleman syllogistically brings forward a proposition of check-strings, for another gentleman to cry ‘Lord forbid,’ does not appear to my mind to be following a regular line of argument. But perhaps the forbidding gentleman will have the goodness to explain the colloquial anomaly.” The forbidding gentleman thus appealed to, good-humouredly apologised. It was a mere slip of the tongue, he said: the words escaped from him involuntarily; but his fellow-traveller would probably excuse him, in consideration of the fact, that on account of a check-string he had lost the only hope of affluence he ever had in his life. “Indeed, Sir! why then I excuse the colloquial irregularity with all my heart,” said the warm man, putting both his hands into his pockets; “but, upon my life, Sir, it must have been a very extraordinary consequence.” [Illustration: A CHINESE PUZZLE.]