ever were caught, these poor wretches, you perceive, whomsoever they may be, missed all the good fish and caught the ONE Broderick !"

Here they arrived at Whitehall stairs, drenched to the skin, and as there were plenty of lanterns and flambeaux at the landing, they looked about to see if they could perceive anything of Sir Allen; but he, like that other luminary, the moon, was not visible to the naked eye just

then.

CHAPTER V.

FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS!

HEN Sir Allen Broderick, after having had too much wine, was likely to suffer still more from the other extreme, of having a great deal too much water, and was hauled up into the boat of the two strangers, he was perfectly insensible, a circumstance to which, in all probability, he owed his life; for, from being so, he floated passively on his back, instead of struggling against and buffeting the waters, which would infallibly have mastered him, for, unlike his son, he was no swimmer. It so happened that the man who had caught his arm and pulled him to the boat, was a medical practitioner; in short-for we hate having secrets from the reader when there is no absolute necessity for it-it was Doctor Erasmus Everhard and his man, Sampson Golightly, who had also been "a pleasuring" upon that treacherous July day, which had began so fairly and ended so foully.

It was too dark to distinguish the features of

the person they had rescued, but Dr. Everhard laid him at full length at the bottom of the boat, on his face first, so as to let any water run out of his mouth.

"Lord save us! I fear, Doctor, we have been meddling with the sexton's business, and have over-hampered ourselves with a corpse," said Sampson.

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No," rejoined the Doctor, turning round the body on its back, and passing his hand inside the clothes, "there is a slight pulsation in the region of the heart. Put your hand in my right coat pocket, and give me the brandy flask; now don't make a mistake, for the sack is in the left hand pocket, and I'll rub the chest and abdomen well with it."

"Eh!" groaned Sampson, "what people take inside there is, at all events, some comfort in return for it, even if the liquor is given away; but those outside drams always seem to me like throwing it away,-pearls before swine sort of work. However, it's to be hoped you'll bring him to, sir, for he is a sprig of quality, as I heerd the gentry in the boat, out of which he fell, call him Sir Allen,' several times, though, to be sure, he may be only a city knight.”

"He'll soon be nothing at all," said the doctor, "if we can't manage to revive him. You take off his wet shoes and stockings Sampson, and

rub the soles of his feet well with brandy; I'll give you the flask when you have got his stockings off."

"Law! said Sampson, "no doubt he's a quality, I feel diamonds, or leastways jewels of some sort in the rosettes of his shoes."

"Here's the brandy; now rub it into the soles of his feet as hard as ever you can."

"Well, there can be no doubt," said Sampson, as he rubbed away with all his might, "that this is the soberest way of taking sperrits, for brandy at the feet is not likely to get into the head."

"I say, my men," said the doctor, addressing the boatmen," as soon as we land have the goodness, one of you, to go and get me a hackney coach. You shall have a shilling for your trouble."

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Very good, sir; I only hope as I shall be able to find one, for these sort of storms we call hack harvests."

"I feel an increased action of the heart," said the doctor to Sampson, as they both continued their frictions. “I think he'll do now, though I doubt his coming quite to himself till we have got him into a warm bed."

When they at length arrived they had to wait full half an hour, before the boatman could succeed in finding a hackney coach, but at last he stopped one with miserably jaded horses, that had

been plying all night, but their owner, for the bribe of a double fare-there being no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in those days at length consented, instead of letting the poor animals continue their way to the stable, to make them undergo another martyrdom as far as the Barbican. So slow and funereal was their pace, that despite the deep ruts and otherwise abominable state of the streets, the jolts, though by no means few, were yet so far between, that they did not seriously incommode the living, while Sir Allen, who was in a very good imitation of death, did not feel them at all.

Arrived before Dr. Everhard's fortified looking house, the coachman got down, and was about to tamper with the detonating knocker, when Sampson called out to him to desist, and his master giving him the key of the hall door, he got out, opened it, and in the hall struck a light, when he returned, and paying the coachman, assisted his master in carrying in Sir Allen, and laying him on a couch in the "consulting room," till Dorcas Fairfax, the sum total of the doctor's female establishment, could be knocked up to make and warm the bed in "the best bedroom."

"Sir! Sir !" cried Sampson, holding the candle to Sir Allen's face, as soon as they had laid him down-the doctor having walked to the other side of the room to take off his wet coat and hat