ions--rubbing my eyes, stretching, and even
pinching myself--before I could awake on the following morning. I felt
somewhat stiffened from the unaccustomed exertions of the day before,
but, somehow, my spirits were unusually high, and my heart in its very
lightest mood. I looked about me through the little room, where all was
order, neatness, and propriety. My clothes carefully brushed and folded,
my boots resplendent in their blacking, stood basking before the
fire; even my hat, placed gently on one side, with my gloves carefully
flattened, were laid out in true valet fashion. The door into my
little sitting-room lay open, and I could mark the neat and comfortable
preparations for my breakfast, while at a little distance from the
table, and in an attitude of patient attention, stood poor Joe himself,
who, with a napkin across his arm, was quietly waiting the moment of my
awaking.

I know not if my reader will have any sympathy with the confession;
but I own I have always felt a higher degree of satisfaction from the
unbought and homely courtesy chance has thrown in my way, than from the
more practised and dearly-paid-for attentions of the most disciplined
household. There is something nattering in the personal devotion which
seems to spring from pure good-will, that insensibly raises one in his
own esteem. In some such reflection as this was I lost, when the door
of my outer room was opened, and a voice inquired if Mr. Hinton stopped
there.

'Yes, sir,' replied Joe; 'he is in bed and asleep.'

'Ah! it is you, Joe?' replied the other. 'So you are turned footman,
I see. If the master be like the man, it ought to be a shrewd
establishment.'

'No,' replied Joe carelessly; 'he's not very like anything down in these
parts, for he appears to be a gentleman.'

'Tell him I am here, and be d----d to you,' was the indignant reply, as
the speaker threw himself into his chair and stirred the fire with his
foot.

Suspecting at once who my visitor was, I motioned to Joe to leave
the room, and proceeded to dress myself with all despatch. During the
operation, however, my friend without manifested several symptoms of
impatience: now walking the room with rapid strides, as he whistled
a quick step; now beating the bars of the grate with a poker, and
occasionally performing that popular war-dance, 'The Devil's Tattoo,'
with his knuckles upon the table. At length his endurance seemed pushed
to its limit, and he knocked sharply at