OUR HONEYMOON.

TUESDAY--MAY 28, 18--,

Shall I ever forget the day? As it comes round--if I'm spared for fifty
years--I'm sure I shall always feel a chill, a pang at the thoughts of
it. That dear, foolish creature, FRED! As if being shot could make it
any better! And then the thought--the horrid thought would press
itself--piercing like a dagger--to be sent into weeds in one's very
Honeymoon!

Of course, the whole house was raised. When JOSEPHINE heard me scream,
and came to the bedroom door, and found it locked, and couldn't make me
sensible to open it--for I'd the key in my hand, and so had dropt it on
the floor when I fell myself in a swoon--

Of course, when JOSEPHINE could make nobody hear, she very soon raised
the house, and there were chambermaids and waiters at the door, and they
were breaking it open, when I came enough to myself to prevent it!

"It's all right, Ma'am," said JOSEPHINE. "Master's safe: not a whit the
worse, depend on't."

"Safe! Are you sure?"--

"Certain, Ma'am. 'Cause the landlord has given information to the
constables, and no doubt on it, he says, they'll all be in custody afore
they can shoot one another."

"Shoot!" Well--for the moment--I did hate the creature as she spoke
the word; speaking it with all the coolness in life--death, I _might_
say.

I hastily slipped something on: went into our room. Had up the landlord,
the landlady; and it really was wonderful--gave me for the time quite a
shock at human nature--to see how little they were moved--in fact not
moved at all--by my wretchedness, my downright misery. "Oh," I thought,
every other minute, "if I once get him home again!" And then the next
moment, some horrid sight would come before me--and no one, no one to
help or advise me. Yes. The landlady counselled me to have a cup of tea,
and the landlord advised me to make myself comfortable. "Things o' the
sort"--he said--"never come to nothing, now-a-days. Besides, he'd given
the word to the constables--and I might make myself easy they'd all be
locked up in a jiffy."

"Could he tell me"--I asked--"the most likely road to take?"

"Why, no," he said, "some folks took one, some another. Some liked the
cliffs, some the Devil's Dyke; but as he'd sent all ways, why, again he
assured me, I had nothing to do but to make myself comfortable."

And even as the horrid man said this, his more dreadful wife--not but
what the woman meant well; only I couldn't abide her for her compos