thing to tell you. Do you know, I
believe there is some mystery about Doctor Mulhaus."

"He is a walking mystery," said Jim; "but he is a noble good fellow,
though unhappily a frog-eater."

"Ah! but I believe Miss Thornton knows it."

"Very like," said Jim, yawning.

"I told him all the conversation I overheard that evening."

"Are you sure she said 'the king'?" he asked.

"Quite sure," I said; "now, what do you make of it?"

"I make this of it," he said: "that it is no earthly business of ours,
or we should have been informed of it; and if I were you, I wouldn't
breathe a word of it to any mortal soul, or let the Doctor suspect that
you overheard anything. Secrets where kings are concerned are precious
sacred things, old Jeff. Good night!"

Chapter XXII

SAM BUCKLEY'S EDUCATION.

This narrative which I am now writing is neither more nor less than an
account of what befell certain of my acquaintances during a period
extending over nearly, or quite, twenty years, interspersed, and let us
hope embellished, with descriptions of the country in which these
circumstances took place, and illustrated by conversations well known
to me by frequent repetition, selected as throwing light upon the
characters of the persons concerned. Episodes there are, too, which I
have thought it worth while to introduce as being more or less
interesting, as bearing on the manners of a country but little known,
out of which materials it is difficult to select those most proper to
make my tale coherent; yet such has been my object, neither to dwell on
the one hand unnecessarily on the more unimportant passages, nor on the
other hand to omit anything which may be supposed to bear on the
general course of events.

Now, during all the time above mentioned, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, have
happened to lead a most uninteresting, and with few exceptions
prosperous existence. I was but little concerned, save as a hearer, in
the catalogue of exciting accidents and offences which I chronicle. I
have looked on with the deepest interest at the lovemaking, and ended a
bachelor; I have witnessed the fighting afar off, only joining the
battle when I could not help it, yet I am a steady old fogey, with a
mortal horror of a disturbance of any sort. I have sat drinking with
the wine-bibbers, and yet at sixty my hand is as steady as a rock.
Money has come to me by mere accumulation; I have taken more pains to
spend it than to make it; in short, all thro