, his own favorite,
struggling in the agonies of death, on the parlor rug. The fact is, he
had shut the doors, but forgotten that the window was open, and the
consequence was, the loss of poor Minx, who had drunk deep of the
malignant poison designed for her gallant.

This was only one of a thousand tricks that had miscarried.

Having one day ascertained that his acquaintance, Tom Wilkins, was gone
out 'a-shooting,' he determined to way-lay him on his return.

It was a beautiful moonlight night in the latter end of October.
Disguising himself in a demoniac mask, a pair of huge wings, and a forked
tail, he seated himself on a stile in the sportsman's path.

Anon he espied the weary and unconscious Tom approaching, lost in the
profundity of thought, and though not in love, ruminating on every miss
he had made in that day's bootless trudge.

He almost, touched the stile before his affrighted gaze encountered this
'goblin damned.'

His short crop bristled up, assuming the stiffness of a penetrating hair
brush.

For an instant his whole frame appeared petrified, and the tide and
current of his life frozen up in thick-ribbed ice.

Jim Smith, meanwhile, holding out a white packet at arm's length,
exclaimed in a sepulchral tone,

"D'ye want a pound of magic shot?"

THE PRACTICAL JOKER.--No. II.

Awfully ponderous as the words struck upon the tightened drum of Tom's
auriculars, they still tended to arouse his fainting spirit.

"Mer-mer-mercy on us!" ejaculated he, and shrank back a pace or two,
still keeping his dilating optics fixed upon the horrible spectre.

"D'ye want a pound of magic shot?" repeated Jim Smith.

"Mur-mur-der!" screamed Tom; and, mechanically raising his gun for action
of some kind appeared absolutely necessary to keep life within him, he
aimed at the Tempter, trembling in every joint.

Jim, who had as usual never calculated upon such a turning of the tables,
threw off his head--his assumed one, of course, and, leaping from the
stile, cried aloud--

"Oh! Tom, don't shoot--don't shoot!--it's only me--Jim Smith!"

Down dropped the gun from the sportsman's grasp.

"Oh! you fool! you--you--considerable fool!" cried he, supporting
himself on a neighbouring hawthorn, which very kindly and considerately
lent him an arm on the occasion. "It's a great mercy--a very great
mercy, Jim--as we wasn't both killed!--another minute, only another
minute, and--but it won't bear thinking on."