"Certainly, Dr. Johnson is right,--great happiness in an English post-
chaise properly driven; more exhilarating than a palanquin. 'Post
equitem sedet atra cura,'--true only of such scrubby hacks as old Horace
could have known. Black Care does not sit behind English posters, eh, my
boy?" As he spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of
the vehicle, and twice put it up again.

"Yet," he resumed, without noticing the brief, good-humoured reply of his
companion,--"yet this is an anxious business enough that we are about. I
don't feel quite easy in my conscience. Poor Braddell's injunctions were
very strict, and I disobey them. It is on your responsibility, John!"

"I take it without hesitation. All the motives for so stern a severance
must have ceased, and is it not a sufficient punishment to find in that
hoped-for son a--"

"Poor woman!" interrupted the elder gentleman, in whom we begin to
recognize the soi-disant Mr. Tomkins; "true, indeed, too true. How well
I remember the impression Lucretia Clavering first produced on me; and to
think of her now as a miserable cripple! By Jove, you are right, sir!
Drive on, post-boy, quick, quick!"

There was a short silence.

The elder gentleman abruptly put his hand upon his companion's arm.

"What consummate acuteness; what patient research you have shown! What
could I have done in this business without you? How often had that
garrulous Mrs. Mivers bored me with Becky Carruthers, and the coral, and