limb, and licked his stream of life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air.

When the traveller who had been recognized recovered from a swoon, he saw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and still, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some dogs away that sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up with a train of ashes.

CHAPTER XVI.

SEVERAL PEOPLE DELIGHTED, AND THE GAME

CHICKEN DISGUSTED.

THE Midshipman was all alive. Mr. Toots and Susan had arrived at last. Susan had run upstairs like a young woman bereft of her senses, and Mr. Toots and the Chicken had gone into the parlor.

"Oh my own pretty darling sweet Miss Floy!" cried the Nipper, running into Florence's room, "to think that it should come to this and I should find you here my own dear dove with nobody to wait upon you and no home to call your own but never never will I go away again Miss Floy for though I may not gather moss I'm not a rolling stone nor is my heart a stone or else it wouldn't bust as it is busting now oh dear oh dear!"

Pouring out these words without the faintest indication of a stop of any sort, Miss Nipper, on her knees beside her mistress, hugged her close.

"Oh love!" cried Susan, "I know all that's past, I know it all my tender pet and I'm a-choking give me air!"

Susan, dear good Susan!" said Florence.

"Oh bless her! I that was her little maid when she was a little child! and is she really, really truly

going to be married?" exclaimed Susan, in a burst of pain and pleasure, pride and grief, and Heaven knows how many other conflicting feelings.

"Who told you so ?" said Florence.

"Oh gracious me ! that innocentest creetur Toots," returned Susan hysterically. "I knew he must be right my dear, because he took on so. He's the devotedest and innocentest infant! And is my darling," pursued Susan, with another close embrace and burst of tears, "really, really going to be married?"

The mixture of compassion, pleasure, tenderness, protection, and regret with which the Nipper constantly recurred to this subject, and, at every such recurrence, raised her head to look in the young face and kiss it, and then laid her head again upon her mistress's shoulder, caressing her and sobbing, was as womanly and good a thing, in its way, as ever was seen in the world.

"There, there!" said the soothing voice of Florence presently. "Now you're quite yourself, dear Susan!"

Miss Nipper, sitting down upon the floor, at her mistress's feet, laughing and sobbing, holding her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes with one hand, and patting Diogenes with the other as he licked her face, confessed to being more composed, and laughed and cried a little more in proof of it.

“I—I— I never did see such a creetur as that Toots," said Susan, "in all my born days, never!" "So kind," suggested Florence. "And so comic!" Susan sobbed.

"The way

he's

been going on inside with me, with that disrespect

able Chicken on the box!"

"About what, Susan ?" inquired Florence timidly. "Oh about Lieutenant Walters, and Captain Gills, and you my dear Miss Floy, and the silent tomb," said Susan.

"The silent tomb!" repeated Florence.

"He says here Susan burst into a violent hysterical laugh—"that he'll go down into it now, immediately and quite comfortable, but bless your heart my dear Miss Floy he won't, he's a great deal too happy in seeing other people happy for that, he may not be a Solomon," pursued the Nipper, with her usual volubility, "nor do I say he is, but this I do say, a less selfish human creature human nature never knew!"

Miss Nipper, being still hysterical, laughed immoderately after making this energetic declaration, and then informed Florence that he was waiting below to see her; which would be a rich repayment for the trouble he had had in his late expedition.

Florence entreated Susan to beg of Mr. Toots as a favor that she might have the pleasure of thanking him for his kindness; and Susan, in a few moments, produced that young gentleman, still very much dishevelled in appearance, and stammering exceedingly.

"Miss Dombey," said Mr. Toots, "to be again permitted to- to - gaze at least, not to gaze, but -I don't exactly know what I was going to say, but it's of no consequence."

"I have to thank you so often," returned Florence, giving him both her hands, with all her innocent gratitude beaming in her face, "that I have no words left, and don't know how to do it."

VOL. III.-20.

"Miss Dombey," said Mr. Toots in an awful voice, "if it was possible that you could, consistently with your angelic nature, curse me, you would if I may be allowed to say so floor me infinitely less than by these undeserved expressions of kindness. Their effect upon me - is — but," said Mr. Toots abruptly, "this is a digression, and's of no consequence at all."

As there seemed to be no means of replying to this but by thanking him again, Florence thanked him again.

"I could wish," said Mr. Toots, "to take this opportunity, Miss Dombey, if I might, of entering into a word of explanation. I should have had the pleasure of of returning with Susan at an earlier period; but, in the first place, we didn't know the name of the relation to whose house she had gone, and, in the second, as she had left that relation's and gone to another at a distance, I think that scarcely anything short of the sagacity of the Chicken would have found her out in the time." Florence was sure of it.

"This, however," said Mr. Toots, "is not the point. The company of Susan has been, I assure you, Miss Dombey, a consolation and satisfaction to me, in my state of mind, more easily conceived than described. The journey has been its own reward. That, however, still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, I have before observed that I know I am not what is considered a quick person. I am perfectly aware of that. I don't think anybody could be better acquainted with his own - if it was not too strong an expression, I should say with the thickness of his own head than myself. But, Miss

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