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331 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 331

strange hands. I shall not have the right of calling on the new proprietors."

" Phew ! " I whistled ; " perhaps that's why you timed your visit now, you artful old codger. I have always heard appearances are deceptive. However, I have ever been a patron of letters ; and although I cannot approve of post- mundane malice, and think the dead past should be let bury its dead, still, if you are set upon it, I will try and use my influence to get your book published."

" Bless you ! " he cried tremulously, with all the effusive- ness natural to an author about to see himself in print, and trembled so violently that he dissipated himself away.

I stood staring a moment at the spot where he had stood, pleased at having out-manoeuvred him ; then my chair gave way with another crash, and I picked myself up painfully, together with the dead stump of my cigar, and brushed the ash off my trousers, and rubbed my eyes and wondered if I had been dreaming. But no ! when I ran into the cheer- less dining-room, with its pervading sense of imminent auction, I found the sliding panel behind the portrait by Reynolds, which seemed to beam kindly encouragement upon me, and, lo ! The Learned Pig was there in a mass of musty manuscript.

As everybody knows, the book made a hit. The Acadceum was unusually generous in its praise : " A lively picture of the century of farthingales and stomachers, marred only by numerous anachronisms and that stilted air of faked-up archaeological knowledge which is, we suppose, inevitable in historical novels. The conversations are particularly artificial. Still, we can forgive Mr. Halliwell a good deal of inaccuracy and inacquaintance with the period, in view of the graphic picture of the literary dictator from the novel point of view of a contemporary who was not among the