y way of a hint to lie still, I advanced to the rescue with
uplifted weapon. No sooner did the rascal perceive my approach, than,
quitting the fallen man, he sprang up, and, without waiting to be
attacked, took to ~232~~his heels and ran off as fast as his legs would
carry him, an example which his companion, seeing the coast clear,
hastened to emulate.

My first act, as soon as the thieves had departed, was to assist the old
gentleman to rise. As soon as he was on his legs again he shook himself,
as if to ascertain that he was uninjured, and exclaimed:--

"Umph! they're gone, are they? the scoundrels, high time they should, I
think; where's my umbrella? umph! second I've lost this year--just like
me".

The voice, the manner, but, above all, the emphatic grunts and the
final self-accusing soliloquy, "just like me," could proceed but from
one person, my old Helmstone acquaintance, Mr. Frampton; though by what
strange chance he should be found wandering by owl-light in a meadow
near Cambridge passed my comprehension to conceive. Feeling secure from
the alteration which had taken place in me since I had last seen him--an
alteration rendered still more complete by my academical costume--that
he would be unable to recognise me, I determined to amuse myself a
little at his expense before I made myself known to him. In pursuance
of this plan I picked up his umbrella and handed it to him, saying in an
assumed voice as I did so, "Here is your umbrella, sir".

"Thank ye, young man, thank ye, cost five-and-twenty shillings last
Friday week; umph! might have got a cotton one for less than one quarter
the money, that would have done just as well to thump thieves with--a
fool and his money--just like me, umph!"

"I hope you are not injured by your fall, or by the rough treatment you
have been subjected to?" inquired I.

"Umph! injured?" was the reply; "I've got a great bump on the back
of my head, and burst all the buttons off my waistcoat--I don't know
whether you call that being injured; but I can tell you I got away from
the Thugs at Strangleabad without any such injuries: umph!"

"It was fortunate that I happened to come up just when I did," observed
I.

"Umph! glad you think so," was the answer; "if that stick had come down
upon your skull, as the blackguard meant it to do, you would not have
found it quite so fortunate, I've a notion. Umph! all the same, I'm much
obliged to you; I might have been robbed and murdered to