lence to the door.

There is often something alarming in an occurrence merely because it
is that which we least expect. The astute Mrs. Lobkins, remembering
the hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of
rage, some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye
his parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door,
her heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made
towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that
day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual; and the signs of
intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her
vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which at
the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion.
He sprang from her grasp to the threshold.

"Where be you going, you imp of the world?" cried the dame. "Get in with
you, and say no more on the matter; be a bob-cull,--drop the bullies,
and you shall have the blunt!"

But Paul heeded not this invitation.

"I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer," said he,
sullenly. "Good-by; and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I
will."

He turned away as he spoke; and the dame, kindling with resentment at
his unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and
bade that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the fire-office below go
along with him.

Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of
emancipated independence, Paul walked on, he knew not whither, with his
head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military
gait of defiance. He had not proceeded far before he heard his name
uttered behind him; he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie
Dunnaker.

Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the
last part of the scene we have described in caressing his afflicted eye,
and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all
those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament; when
Mrs. Lobkins, turning round after Paul's departure, and seeing the
pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered
Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with
an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late
dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her
comfort that she should unburden somewhere.

She seized the