THE FIRST DAY OF TERM.

"Has anybody called upon me, this morning, Mrs. Brown?" inquired Mr. Launcelot Transit, a young gentleman of fashionable exterior, as he entered the breakfast parlour of his landlady, a middle-aged person of a pursy presence and an agreeable demeanour.

"Lord! no, sir!" replied Mrs. Brown, as she pounced upon the spout of the tea-urn, and gave her accustomed dip to the tea-cups-" who would think of calling upon you at this early hour, Mr. Transit ?-no clandestine marriage on foot, eh, sir ?—he, he, he," and the landlady indulged in a lodging-house giggle.

"Ha! ha!-oh! no, Mrs. Brown," and a sickly smile on the lodger's face died of a rapid decline. “I was thinking some one might have called-that's all."

There was a deep and unaccountable melancholy spread over Transit's commonly vivacious visage-his usually buoyant spirits had deserted him, and, as he hummed a dolorous cavatina, he might have been compared to a grig in grief, or a cricket chirping the dead march in Saul.

"And you have seen no one in the street since you rose, Mrs. Brown?" he resumed, after a pause.

"That's more than I can say," answered the landlady, with a becoming reverence for truth. "I have seen three chimney-sweeps, five milkmen, several old clothesmen, an old woman with water-cresses, and I don't know

how many servant girls opposite banging their mats against the street door steps-and a filthy dust they make. We shall presently have the pot-boy, I dare-say; but you look peaking this morning, my dear sir, what's the matter?"

"I had a dream last night," muttered Transit, with an odious grimace. "I dreamt. I was pursued by an alligator."

"An alligator, Mr. Transit; well, that was shocking -what sort of an animal was that?"

"It was dressed in top-boots, and had a Belcher handkerchief round its neck," said the dreamer.

"Only think of that, now," cried Mrs. Brown, as she leaned her hand upon her knee, and sputtered into a laugh like a damp skyrocket. "Really, Mr. Transit, you are the funniest man

"Was not that somebody at the door?" faltered Transit, starting like a guilty creature-but not "sitting at a play,"

"I didn't hear a knock," said Mrs. Brown, "but what if there is—you are quite nonsical this morning, I declare, —but there certainly is,” added the landlady, looking out of the window, "a man leaning against the lamp-post, waiting for somebody, I suppose."

Down went the Bohea with a splash into the lodger's saucer, while the tea-cup hung suspended from the tip of his forefinger, and a piece of dry toast stuck in his jaws like a pound of bran in the throat of Ugolino.

It was

It was to be so-Transit knew it must be so. the first day of term. Messrs. Stitch and Stretch bad advised him that, unless certain articles manufactured of sheep's wool were paid for before that day, a certain piece of sheep's skin should be issued forth to compel such payment. It was a bailiff.

"What kind of thing is it, Madam?" croaked the

sufferer, at length.

"It's a man, sir," cried Mrs. Brown, calmly.

"He squints, Mr. Transit; eyes like those of a pictur' —that always seem to be looking at you, and never are." "Oh, yes-they are," groaned the lodger. "What has it on its head, Madam?"

"A broad-brimmed hat."

"Round its neck?"

"A coloured handkerchief."

"On its legs?"

"Top boots."

"In its hand?"

"A twisted crab-stick, with knots, like, in it."

With Tarquin strides, and bent nearly double, like a master of the ceremonies with a cramp in the stomach, and with a face that rendered the similitude still stronger, did Mr. Launcelot Transit evacuate the apartment, and crawling up stairs to his bed-room, locked himself in to enjoy the pleasure of his own society.

It was necessary to reconnoitre this pest of human kind; and gingerly as an ostrich from its covert, did he protrude his head from the window to watch the proceedings of the being below. The wretch was whistling a vulgar tune, and leaning on his stick with the commendable patience of an experienced adept. Never did that tune strike on the tympanum of the lodger's ear with so grating a harshness-never, surely, was human crea

ture so positively ugly and barbarously hideous as the person at the lamp-post. Yes; it was Fang, for his face was for a moment elevated, and his ill-assorted eyes were projected on a voyage of discovery, in different directions over the exterior of the house. "Son of bailiff, I know the now." Transit knew him of old. It was Fang; the most active of sheriff's officers. Once before had his shoulder blade been paralysed by the torpedo touch of the reptile's antennæ-once before had he been liberated from his grasp by paternal affection-once-but no more was such protection to be extended to him. Down upon the bed he sunk in an agony of doubt, amazement, and fear.

But something must be done-a thought struck him, and he started from the bed. "Yes, I will call on little Dicky Spraggs, and borrow the money of him-he'll lend it me in a moment. I'm sure of it—a good little fellow that-I don't know a better fellow breathing than Dicky Spraggs-he certainly is a kind creature." But how to get out the case was desperate, and the idea of the practicability of escape darted through his brain. Dressing himself hastily, he descended to the kitchen, and from thence deviated into the area, and crawling up the steps, after the manner of quadrupeds, brought his eye to a level with the railings. Fang seemed fastened to the lamp-post, and was at this moment whistling the before-mentioned tune for the seventy-third time. But he was looking in another direction.

"Soft Pity enters through an iron gate,"

says Shakspeare; but Fang was not soft pity, but hard cruelty; and softly, very softly, did Launcelot Transit open the iron gate, and squeezing himself through, swiftly, very swiftly, with three unnatural bounds did he

clear the street, and glancing round the corner with a whisk to which lightning is mere laziness, was out of sight in a moment.

66

Dicky, my boy," said he, with a miserable effort at gaiety, as he entered the parlour where good little Dicky Spraggs was enshrined in all the luxury of silk dressinggown and velvet slippers; "I am come to borrow thirty pounds of you-an awkward trifle--and it must be had."

"Then you have just come to the wrong shop, my Launcelot," cried the eccentric Dicky, with his accustomed irresistible humour, "for the devil a mopus have I left," and he emptied the drawer of his writing-desk upon the table, displaying an infinite number of broken wafers, rusty keys, and Havannah cigars-" you see how it is," and he gave a wink, and burst into what Launcelot could not but think a particularly ill-timed laugh.

"Well-but Spraggs," expostulated Transit, "Dicky, my friend, you have surely other funds that you could lay your finger upon to oblige me.”

66

Not a doit," answered Spraggs, whose principal employment of money at all times was to spend—and not to lend; and who had settled long ago, in his own mind, that Launcelot was never to touch a farthing of his "I live at too great an expense to save moneynow, these lodgings cost me three guineas a week.”

"Indeed!” said the other, not heeding him.

"Yes, and not much neither," resumed Spraggs, "considering what a respectable look-out in front we enjoy here."

66

"A good look-out, certainly," sighed Launcelot, walking to the window. Had the woe-begone Transit been shot through the brain with a ball of quicksilver, he could not have sprung with a more frantic leap from the window than he did at this instant.