btless beset, both before and behind them. When the two
parties, now united, had taken their way back to Elvas, Lieutenant
Goring found an opportunity of putting himself alongside of Lady
Mabel.

She reproached him with the boyish trick he had just perpetrated. It
might so easily have had fatal consequences. Goring, himself began to
think it not so witty as he had fancied it.

"It was very provoking, though," said he, "to be left out of your
pleasant party. I hope you will consider that, Lady Mabel, and forgive
me for the little alarm I have given you."

"Not to-night," said she. "My nerves are quite too much shaken. But
if I sleep well, and feel like myself again, I may possibly forgive
you to-morrow."

CHAPTER XVI.

(_Rosalind reading a paper_.)

From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind,
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind,
All the pictures fairest lined,
Are but black to Rosalind,
Let no face be kept in mind,
But the face of Rosalind.

_Touchstone_.--I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners and
suppers, and sleeping hours excepted; it is the right butter-woman's
rank to market.

As You Like It.

Whenever L'Isle took holiday from his military duties, he was pretty
sure to take it out of his regiment, the next day. On parade, next
morning, he inspected the ranks, bent on detecting some defect in
bearing or equipment, and peered into the faces of the men, as if
hunting out the culprits in the latest breach of discipline. Men and
officers looked for a three hours' drill, to improve their wind, and
put them in condition. But, to their great comfort, he soon let them
off, and hastened back to his quarters. Arrived there, he called to
his man for his portfolio, and at once sat down to write as if he had
a world of correspondence before him. But it was plain to this man,
who had occasion to come often into the room, that his master did not
get through his work with his usual facility. He found him, not so
often writing, as leaning on the table in laborious cogitation, or
biting the feather end of his quill, or rapping his forehead with his
knuckles, to stimulate the action of the organs within, or else
striding up and down the room, in a brown study, over sundry
half-written and discarded sheets of paper, scattered on the floor.
L'Isle's servant