celebrate its tercentenary with an international monument to Willoughby and Chancellor. But he spoke beyond the book, not knowing how grim a joke fate had in store for the occasion. For, as every one knows, the ceremony which solemnized the tercentenary of our friendship with Russia was the declaration of a most bloody and ill-advised war; and the only monument. Chancel

hostile British squadron in that same great bay where the astonished Muscovites had welcomed him just three hundred years before.

JULIAN CORBETT.

From Temple Bar.

AT THE SIGN OF THE PANTUFFEL.
PREFATORY.

was lost, and Shalkan, the flogged chan- fifty years ago a Russian proposed to cellor, who was now omnipotent, sent him a mocking message that the English emperor was dead. Confined to his house Bowes placed it in as good a state of defence as means allowed, and waited for the worst. For two months he was thus kept a prisoner in daily fear of his life, and then came a summons to repair to court for his congé. It was given by Shalkan with studied indignities, and before the fuming am-lor received were the scars left by a bassador was allowed to enter the presence of the new emperor his sword was forcibly taken from him. Not to be outdone in insolence he straightway sat down, pulled off his boots, and sending for his bed-gown, slippers, and nightcap, vowed he would enter the presence so, since he might not go as a soldier. It was only by threats of violence that he was induced to accept the czar's cool letters and trivial present for the queen, and with such reckless defiance did he AFTER the fashion of children's carry himself to the last, that it would story-books, once upon a time there was seem to have been only by Horsey's a man called Mildenhall - at least, that exertions that he was suffered to leave is what people used to call him who had Moscow alive. Abandoned by the dis-only seen his name written, but had gusted English colony Bowes and his followers set out armed to the teeth, and, insulted at every step yet too formidable for violence, made their way at last to St. Nicholas Bay. The embarkation had all the aspect of an operation of war, but even then they had not heard the last of him. For once safe on board he managed by a daring expedient to return the czar's letters and present on the hands of the insolent official who had attended him to the coast. In vain they pursued him, thinking to compel him to receive them back. He had marked the last point in the game, and sailed away deriding their efforts.

never heard it pronounced — Mil-denhall, in three syllables; for that is how he spelt it, and of course they did not know any better. But he himself and his friends pronounced it quite differently; they used to say with great emphasis My! and then shut down their teeth as suddenly as possible afterwards; yet not so suddenly but that an n would also rush out and escape before they could prevent it (after the manner of that doughty knight, Marmion, when he bolted out at the castle gate as the portcullis was in the act of falling, and the "bars descending razed his plume" and how about the horse's tail ?). But to continue; as, as I was saying, the whole three-syllable name was supposed to be rushing out of a man's mouth with great impetuosity, he would let its head out and then cleverly bite it in two so that the rest of it never reached the open air and the light of day, but being swallowed down again, was kept down there to do duty But the tail, the seem not easily

So ends the first chapter of AngloRussian history and the story of the men who made it. To Horsey fell the task of filling the breach which Bowes's heroic diplomacy had the ill-luck to make, and well he played his part. With the accession of a new Anglophile czar a good understanding was re-established. For three centuries it continued for the next occasion. with a cordiality so unbroken that some, being as it would

choked down, would struggle up and was suffering from overwork in busi

get out in a very much enfeebled condition as the man opened his mouth again; and so the whole name sounded Myn(gurgle)l.

Now the man with this extraordinary name had also an extraordinary thing happen to himself; a young lady pulled him out of a river wherein he was drowning. She did not want to marry him (this was not extraordinary, for he was rather old and ugly); he did not want to marry her (this was perhaps more curious, as she was young and very pretty); but he lay on his back on the grass, when she had pulled him out of the water, and refused point blank to propose to her, or even to accept her hand if she offered it to him.

Such was the procedure of an elderly and respectable city merchant; and the extraordinary part of the story is, that he still looks upon this abrupt way of conducting himself as the most rational thing that he ever did in his life.

I know he does, for I myself am he. But, as the story has begun to get about among my friends, and appears to be seriously damaging my reputation for sanity among them, I am anxious to explain publicly, once for all, how the thing really happened.

I.

THE DAY BEFORE.

e;

ness, and the strain of London noise and bustle, and consequently wanted to be as quiet and undisturbed as possible. In the Pantuffel gardens I discovered a huge beech-tree down by the riverside the branches stretched far out over the stream, which ran deep and strong beneath them. It was perhaps rather a strange thing for me to do, but I was possessed by the desire of solitude and idleness - I procured a hammock and had it slung along one of these boughs, so that it swung some feet above the water, and well out from the bank. It was a difficult matter to get into the hammock in this position, but the gardener left me the ladder which he had used in fixing it up, and therewith I assured myself that the task of mounting into my little nest was a perfectly practicable one. I promised myself that I would spend many an hour in idle happiness in this novel retreat; certainly I was very far from anticipating the excitements which would intrude upon my proposed seclusion, or the awkward situations in which I should be involved, owing to my eccentric choice of the spot in which my hammock was swinging.

That same night there came in two young fellows, Cambridge men, to stay a day or two: Mr. Bob Tyncker to fish, so he said (his entire fishing outfit was,

THE Pantuffel Inn is a charming however, a curious one, and consisted riverside hostelry, in equally charming of a very weak trout-rod, a heavy jackcountry, not a thousand miles (by a line, a couple of salmon-flies, a little "long chalk ") from London. When I say a riverside hostelry, I thank heaven (in a parenthesis) that it is not on the Thames. No, no! the Bibble is the river; the Bibble (as I say, thank heaven) as yet unknown to cockney fame, and therefore still quiet and peaceful, haunted only by a stray fisherman or two, or by some solitude-seeker like myself and by the herons and coots which love to splash through the reeds along the bank. Yet it is an excellent fishing locality, and the country around, heavily wooded, more charming than any that I know along the much-bepraised Thames.

perch-tackle, and a box of lob-worms). His companion, Mr. Tattler, had come "'cos I met Bob at Paddington, y' know; and he was lookin' so much more lively than usual (he and I are up together at Trinity, you see), that I thought he must be spendin' his Long Vac. pretty pleasantly; and so I told him I'ud take a cut in, too, for a day or so; keep him comp'ny, don'tcherknow? So, as he was only comin' down here fishin' for a couple of days, and as I had got my traps at the station, waitin' for somethin' to turn up, why down I came too."

Here Mr. Bob Tyncker muttered to When I was staying down there, I himself something of which I caught

part to the effect that he wished to heaven he could have given Tattler the slip; Tattler wasn't a bad sort of chap, but he was so confoundedly talkative, and altogether deucedly in the way, just at present."

same), had retired quietly to my hammock, and was now swinging lazily over the Bibble.

Behind them the stream had

The great beech-tree formed a leafy tent about me; the enormous stem towered upwards from the very brink In the course of the evening Tattler of the river; thousands of the roots came and sat with me in the smoking- had pushed themselves through the room, Tyncker having gone out "to soft and crumbling bank, and were ground - bait," he told Tattler. But hanging down in matted network in the Tattler evidently thought his proceed- water. ings were growing a trifle mysterious. washed away the earth-how far I "He don't seem very chummy just could not tell, for they formed a sort now," he complained to me, sticking of fringe in front of the cavity; but an eyeglass in his eye and staring at through their interstices I could see the me through it solemnly enough, but in current glancing, black and deep, right a half-inquiring, half-impudent sort of in underneath the treacherous bank. way that seemed habitual to him, and Two or three long, thin roots thrust that made me feel inclined to burst out themselves forth from the darkness belaughing; "shouldn't wonder if he was neath the fringe, and swung with a courtin' the barmaid out in the back slow, living sort of motion in the stream. garden. What else brings him down I began to picture to myself the fancy here? He ain't a fisherman, that I that they were the feelers of some know. And besides, why should he gigantic river-octopus, lying there in want to write a little note in a surrepti- his den expectant of prey. tious sort of way, and slip out with it like a burglar, if he's only gone to ground-bait? P'raps that's how they ground-bait where Tyncker comes from; but they don't do it for fish, any way." The opposite bank was low, and And the aggrieved Mr. Tattler pro- skirted by heavy clumps of bushes s; ceeded to inform me that he himself then came an artificial embankment, came from Karatoga, New Zealand, following the windings of the river, "where every one was always pleased to see a friend," he said again, somewhat complainingly.

In this mood Tattler was not quite so entertaining as I felt he might generally be, and I retired early. I determined to keep my little nook and hammock to myself if possible. Tattler was not a bad specimen of the genus undergrad., and certainly Tyncker seemed a very good specimen; but I wanted quiet and rest, and felt that talkative undergraduate society was just then not quite to my taste.

"I hope to goodness I shan't fall out of this hammock," I said to myself with a sort of shudder, turning my attention with some relief elsewhere.

and away beyond were water-meadows, and then gently sloping and wellwooded hills. A few minutes' contemplation of the peaceful scene was sufficient to rid me of my late creepy sensation; and once more, like a snail drawing in its horns, my attention drew back to my immediate neighborhood.

The tree was opened about me like an immense umbrella. On the land side the boughs hung down, many feet distant from the stem, in a semi-circle. Beneath them I had a glimpse of the old-fashioned inn gardens, crowded with rhododendron - bushes and cypresses, and, farther still, the quaintly gabled inn itself. The semi-circle of the boughs It was ten o'clock, and a marvellously that overhung the water came much fine August day. I had contrived to lower-many of them indeed were give Mr. Tattler the slip soon after trailing their lowest leaves in the surbreakfast (it struck me that Mr. Bob face itself. Beneath them a few dace Tyncker was endeavoring to do the moved gently along, close to the top;

II.

MORNING.

sometimes floating lazily in the broad | heavy jack-line, affixed a rather staring sunshine outside; sometimes coming float; then tying on a hook which into the shade, and they flicked in sport seemed already baited, dropped it in the dipping leaves as they passed. I quietly between two bushes, and half expected to see my friend Mr. watched the float swim down and beTyncker stroll down from the inn and come fixed among the branches of the try a fly out under the branches. lower bush.

"That is a queer way to fish!" I along the top of the embankment I thought, rather interested.