. Again the Haygarthian
epistles have been tampered with. Early this morning comes an indignant
note from Miss Judson, reminding me that I promised the packet of
letters should be restored to her yesterday at noon, and informing me
that they were not returned until last night at eleven o'clock, when
they were left at her back garden-gate by a dirty boy who rang the bell
as loudly as if he had been giving the alarm of fire, and who thrust
the packet rudely into the hand of the servant and vanished
immediately. So much for the messenger. The packet itself, Miss Judson
informed me, was of a dirty and disgraceful appearance, unworthy the
hands of a gentlewoman, and one of the letters was missing.

Heedless of my influenza, I rushed at once to the lower regions of the
inn, saw the waiter into whose hands I had confided my packet at
half-past ten o'clock yesterday morning, and asked what messenger had
been charged with it. The waiter could not tell me. He did not
remember. I told him plainly that I considered this want of memory very
extraordinary. The waiter laughed me to scorn, with that quiet
insolence which a well-fed waiter feels for a customer who pays twenty
shillings a week for his board and lodging. The packet had been given
to a very respectable messenger, the waiter made no doubt. As to
whether it was the ostler, or one of the boys, or the Boots, or a young
woman in the kitchen who went on errands sometimes, the waiter wouldn't
take upon himself to swear, being a man who would perish rather than
inadvertently perjure himself. As to my packet having been tampered
with, that was ridiculous. What on earth was there in a lump of
letter-paper for any one to steal? Was there money in the parcel? I was
fain to confess there was no money; on which the waiter laughed aloud.

Failing the waiter, I applied myself severally to the ostler, the boys,
the Boots, and the young woman in the kitchen; and then transpired the
curious fact that no one had carried my packet. The ostler was sure he
had not; the Boots could take his Bible oath to the same effect; the
young woman in the kitchen could not call to mind anything respecting a
packet, though she was able to give me a painfully circumstantial
account of the events of the morning--where she went and what she did,
down to the purchase of three-pennyworth of pearl-ash and a pound of
Glenfield starch for the head chambermaid, on which she dwelt with a
persistent fondness.

I now