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 betrayed an interest in one's health when she was about to administer a pill of one sort or another. She was about to administer one just now—a blue one!

"I have sent for you, Barbara," says the dowager, in shivery thin tones that were like cold water trickling down one's spine, "to inform you that your dear friend, Miss Prudence Canticle, your ownest Prue, the dearest Prue that ever was, the precious Prue, to whom all the world is but as a china tea-cup, is just a man, and a very pretty scoundrel."

An elderly lady of six-and-fifty winters, whose face is Arctic, and is framed, moreover, in cork-*screw curls that look horribly like icicles, can throw an extraordinary stress and feeling in the mild word, "man." And this instant, such an amount did my aunt employ that a feather might have knocked me down.

"Shall I tell you this man's name?" the pitiless dowager inquired.

In assent I bowed my head.

"Anthony Dare," says she, with unction; "escaped rebel, who is to be hanged as a common malefactor."

"Yes, aunt, Anthony Dare," says I; "and 'tis all very true, except in the main particular. He is not to be hanged as a common malefactor."

"Indeed," says she. "But that is the Government's disposition, I understand."

"I do not deny that it is the Government's dis