ilk the ram to set her bonnet at a poor young native chap who
regarded her with nothing but platonical esteem, and advising her to sit
down for the recovery of her wind.

But alack! this speech only operated to inspire her with _spretae injuria
formae_, and flourishing a large stalwart umbrella, she exclaimed that
she would teach me how to insult a lady.

After that she came floundering once again over the partition, and
guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair
had become a _sauve qui peut_, and devil take the hindmost: and at the
nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I
most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing
emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that the train
immediately became stationary.

Then, as my female persecutress alighted on the floor of the compartment
in the limp condition of a collapse, I stepped across to my original
seat, and endeavoured to look as if with withers unwrung. Presently the
Guard appeared, and what followed I can best render in the dramatical
form of a dialogue:--

_The Guard_ (_addressing the ~Elderly Female~, who is sitting smiling with
vacuity beneath the bell-pull_). So it is you who have sounded the
alarm! What is it all about?

_The Elderly Female_ (_with warm indignation_). Me? I never did! I am
too much of the lady. It was that young coloured gentleman in the next
compartment.

[_At which the tip of my nose goes down with
apprehensiveness._

_The Guard._ Indeed! A likely story! How could the gentleman ring this
bell from where he is?

_Myself_ (_with mental presence_). Well said, Mister GUARD! The thing
is not humanly possible. _Rem acu tetigisti!_

_The Guard._ I do not understand Indian, Sir. If you have anything to
say about this affair, you had better say it.

_Myself_ (_combining discretion with magnanimousness_). As a chivalrous,
I must decline to bring any accusation against a member of the weaker
sex, and my tongue is hermetically sealed.

_The Eld. F._ It was _him_ who rang the alarm, and not me. He was in
this compartment, and I in that.

_The Guard._ What? have you been playing at Hide-and-seek together,
then? But if your story is watertight, he must have rung the bell in a
state of abject bodily terror, owing to your chivying him about!

_The Eld. F._ It is false! I have been well educated, and belong to an
excellent family. I merely wanted t