ent yonder, in the
graveyard, you may find the epitaph I have mentioned. What is more, here
comes a rather interesting local character of ours, who cut the
inscription and put up the monument."

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN came shuffling up the road as he spoke, followed in the
distance by the inevitable SMALLEY and a shower of promiscuous stones.

"Here, you boy!" roared Judge SWEENEY, beckoning the amiable child to
him with a bit of small money, "aim at _all_ of us--do you hear?--and
see that you don't hit any windows. And now, MCLAUGHLIN, how do you do?
Here is a gentleman spending the summer with us, who would like to know
you."

Old MORTARITY stared at the hair and beard, thus introduced to him, with
undisguised amazement, and grimly remarked, that if the gentleman would
come to see him any evening, and bring a social bottle with him, he
would not allow the gentleman's head to stand in the way of a further
acquaintance.

"I shall certainly call upon you," assented Mr. CLEWS, "if our young
friend, the stone-thrower, will accept a trifle to show me the way."

Before retiring to his bed that night, the same Mr. TRACEY CLEWS took
off his hair and beard, examined them closely, and then broke into a
strange smile. "No wonder they all looked at me so!" he soliloquized,
"for I did have my locks on the topside backmost, and my whiskers turned
the wrong way. However, for a dead-beat, with all his imperfections on
his head, I've formed a pretty large acquaintance for one day."[2]

(_To be Continued._)

[Footnote 1: "Buffer" is the term used in the English story. Its nearest
native equivalent is, probably, our Dead-Beat;" meaning, variously,
according to circumstances, a successful American politician; a wife's
male relative; a watering-place correspondent of a newspaper, a New York
detective policeman; any person who is uncommonly pleasant with people,
while never asking them to take anything with him; a pious boarder; a
French revolutionist.]

[Footnote 2: In both conception and execution, the original of the above
Chapter, in Mr. DICKENS's work, is, perhaps, the least felicitous page
of fiction ever penned by the great novelist; and, as this Adaptation is
in no wise intended as a burlesque, or caricature, of the _style_ at the
original, (but rather as a conscientious imitation of it, so far as
practicable,) the Adapter has not allowed himself that license of humor
which, in the most comically effective treatment of said Chapt