but happily not for ever. They made what noise they could, and Bertram heard this; but he thought it was just the boys amusing themselves, and so he paid no attention to it. Thus it went on, and the poor little fellows so suffered from want of fresh air that they could not speak to each other, and were getting very faint. Young Halswell had a dreadful headache; when at what would have been in all likelihood their last effort, they tried the lid of the chest, and found to their surprise that it opened, and they were free, after a confinement that must have lasted about three hours. For their release they were indebted to the little dog Gip. After the lid came down they heard the little creature running round the chest and leaping on it in a state of great excitement, as if conscious that there was something wrong. His leaps were continued for a long time; and they are sure that in one of them he must have pushed his nose at the hasp of the lid and opened it, and hence their release. Well done, Gip! Nothing could have been more extraordinary or more unexpected than this.” In the same letter he refers to a robbery that had just taken place at Parkside, by which about £250 had been carried off out of the safe. The police seemed to think that the robbery might have been committed by some one in the works. It was amusingly characteristic of the writer to find him in a subsequent letter seemingly deriving much satisfaction from the fact that the rogue had not been convicted! His recreations, as already stated, alternated between such pleasant rambles among the beauties of nature and objects of historic and archæological interest in his own country as have been glanced at here, and a journey through novel scenes in foreign lands. The previous summer had been devoted to the tour in the Baltic and Russia, which has furnished some brief notes for a previous chapter. Writing to his friend, Major MacEnery, soon after his return, Mr. Nelson thus indicated the plans he was already maturing for another season: “We went over a good many thousand miles in our late journeyings. The only breakdown was that of Florence, at Moscow, which came in the way to prevent our all going to the Volga, and seeing some of the strange sights that are to be witnessed there, especially at the great fair of Nijni-Novgorod. So we had to leave our visit to that part of the world till another opportunity; and when I go next to Moscow, which I hope will be in the course of next summer or autumn, if all’s well, I will not be satisfied unless I go down the Volga to Astrakhan, at the extreme north of the Caspian Sea, and sail down that sea to Baku, where the celebrated oil wells are, and take the railway then across to Batoum on the Black Sea, and go thence to the Crimea, and so find my way home by Greece and Vienna: and this will be a glorious journey.”