oil, and was only aware of the bad bargain
when he felt unequal to continue the contest. His doctors had sent
him abroad for rest, for that "distraction" which as often sustain its
English as its French acceptance, and is only a source of worry and
anxiety where rest and peace are required. His means were of the
smallest--he was the only son of a country vicar, who was sorely pinched
to afford him a very narrow support--and who had to raise by a loan
the hundred pounds that were to give him this last chance of regaining
strength and vigour. If travel therefore had its pleasures, it had also
its pains for him. He felt, and very bitterly, the heavy load that his
present enjoyment was laying upon those he loved best in the world, and
this it was that, at his happiest moments, threw a gloom over an already
moody and depressed temperament.

The sad thought of those at home, whose privations were the price of
his pleasures, tracked him at every step; and pictures of that humble
fireside where sat his father and his mother, rose before him as he
gazed at the noble cathedral, or stood amazed before the greatest
triumphs of art. This sensitive feeling, preying upon one naturally
susceptible, certainly tended little to his recovery, and even at times
so overbore every other sentiment, that he regretted he had ever come
abroad. Scarcely a day passed that he did not hesitate whether he should
not turn his steps homeward to England.

CHAPTER II. THE PASSENGERS ON THE STEAMBOAT.

THE table d'hote room was empty as the two Englishmen entered it at
supper-time, and they took their places, moodily enough, at one end of
a table laid for nigh thirty guests. "All gone to Lahnech, Franz?" asked
Calvert of the waiter.

"Yes, Sir, but they'll be sorry for it, for there's thunder in the air,
and we are sure to have a deluge before nightfall."

"And the new arrivals, are they gone too?"

"No, Sir. They are up stairs. The old lady would seem to have forgotten
a box, or a desk, on board the steamer, and she has been in such a state
about it that she couldn't think of supping; and the young ones appear
to sympathise in her anxieties, for they, too, said, 'Oh, we can't think
of eating just now.'"

"But of course, she needn't fuss herself. It will be detained at
Mayence, and given up to her when she demands it."

A very expressive shrug of the shoulders was the only answer Franz made,
and Calvert added, "You don't quite agree with me,