ncle Job told his officers as soon as he got back to camp; but what
they thought of it I never heard--neither did he. Boney's army never
came, and a good job for me; for the Cove below my father's house was
where he meant to land, as this secret visit showed. We coast-folk
should have been cut down one and all, and I should not have sat here to
tell this tale.'

We who listened to old Selby that night have been familiar with his
simple grave-stone for these ten years past. Thanks to the incredulity
of the age his tale has been seldom repeated. But if anything short of
the direct testimony of his own eyes could persuade an auditor that
Bonaparte had examined these shores for himself with a view to a
practicable landing-place, it would have been Solomon Selby's manner of
narrating the adventure which befell him on the down.

_Christmas_ 1882.

A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS

It is a Saturday afternoon of blue and yellow autumn time, and the scene
is the High Street of a well-known market-town. A large carrier's van
stands in the quadrangular fore-court of the White Hart Inn, upon the
sides of its spacious tilt being painted, in weather-beaten letters:
'Burthen, Carrier to Longpuddle.' These vans, so numerous hereabout, are
a respectable, if somewhat lumbering, class of conveyance, much resorted
to by decent travellers not overstocked with money, the better among them
roughly corresponding to the old French _diligences_.

The present one is timed to leave the town at four in the afternoon
precisely, and it is now half-past three by the clock in the turret at
the top of the street. In a few seconds errand-boys from the shops begin
to arrive with packages, which they fling into the vehicle, and turn away
whistling, and care for the packages no more. At twenty minutes to four
an elderly woman places her basket upon the shafts, slowly mounts, takes
up a seat inside, and folds her hands and her lips. She has secured her
corner for the journey, though there is as yet no sign of a horse being
put in, nor of a carrier. At the three-quarters, two other women arrive,
in whom the first recognizes the postmistress of Upper Longpuddle and the
registrar's wife, they recognizing her as the aged groceress of the same
village. At five minutes to the hour there approach Mr. Profitt, the
schoolmaster, in a soft felt hat, and Christopher Twink, the
master-thatcher; and as the hour strikes there rapidly drop in the parish
cle