ng enough to support his weight, and sat down, resting upon
his cane, and looking attentively at his host, who very soon became
totally insensible of his presence. A long pause of total silence
ensued, only disturbed by the rustling leaves of the folio from which
Mr. Cargill seemed to be making extracts, and now and then by a little
exclamation of surprise and impatience, when he dipped his pen, as
happened once or twice, into his snuff-box, instead of the inkstandish
which stood beside it. At length, just as Mr. Touchwood began to think
the scene as tedious as it was singular, the abstracted student raised
his head, and spoke as if in soliloquy, "From Acon, Accor, or St. John
d'Acre, to Jerusalem, how far?"

"Twenty-three miles north north-west," answered his visitor, without
hesitation.

Mr. Cargill expressed no more surprise at a question which he had put to
himself being answered by the voice of another, than if he had found the
distance on the map, and indeed, was not probably aware of the medium
through which his question had been solved; and it was the tenor of the
answer alone which he attended to in his reply.--"Twenty-three
miles--Ingulphus," laying his hand on the volume, "and Jeffrey Winesauf,
do not agree in this."

"They may both be d----d, then, for lying block-heads," answered the
traveller.

"You might have contradicted their authority, sir, without using such an
expression," said the divine, gravely.

"I cry you mercy, Doctor," said Mr. Touchwood; "but would you compare
these parchment fellows with me, that have made my legs my compasses
over great part of the inhabited world?"

"You have been in Palestine, then?" said Mr. Cargill, drawing himself
upright in his chair, and speaking with eagerness and with interest.

"You may swear that, Doctor, and at Acre too. Why, I was there the month
after Boney had found it too hard a nut to crack.--I dined with Sir
Sydney's chum, old Djezzar Pacha, and an excellent dinner we had, but
for a dessert of noses and ears brought on after the last remove, which
spoiled my digestion. Old Djezzar thought it so good a joke, that you
hardly saw a man in Acre whose face was not as flat as the palm of my
hand--Gad, I respect my olfactory organ, and set off the next morning as
fast as the most cursed hard-trotting dromedary that ever fell to poor
pilgrim's lot could contrive to tramp."

"If you have really been in the Holy Land, sir," said Mr. Cargill, whom
the reckl