possessing a hero to be critical. His enemies and his detractors, and even he was not without these inevitable accompaniments of fame, said he was a glutton. It was a harsh term to use of one whose exquisite taste in gastronomy was to some of us one of the pleasantest features of his character. He was a genial soul, was Joseph Stickler, when he unbent over those 'little suppers,' which were veritable Noctes Ambrosiana to those who were permitted to partake of them; for our hero was not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others. Happy mortals those who were privileged to be guests at these symposia ! They could forget that they were in dreary Donjonville, and imagine themselves transported to some gastronomic Paradise, some culinary Elysium. No man is a hero to his valet, if we are to believe Madame Cornuel; but, I take it, a man may be a hero to his cook when that functionary is but the executant of ideas which emanate from the mastermind. Joseph Stickler had an excellent cook, and I am sure that in her eyes he was not one whit less a hero than he was in ours. Nor did the aureola of his heroism lose any of its radiance when he sat at the head of his own supper-table, keenly enjoying our enjoyment of the dainty dishes which had cost him more time and thought, perhaps, than any but an epicure could excuse. Had he had the ordering of the calendar I am sure that both Brillat Savarin and Abbé Duchesne would speedily have been canonised as saints; and I am inclined to think they deserve the honour as much as some who figure on the saintly bead-roll. However, it was impossible that the profanum vulgus, which feeds, but knows not what it is to eat in

telligently, should sympathise with this trait in the character of our hero in black. Nor will I insist upon claiming for that trait the right to be considered as an attribute of heroism, or even in itself to be pronounced heroic. But in the case of Joseph Stickler it had a posthumous reflection of the heroic thrown upon it, which is my excuse for introducing it here.

Our hero was smitten down with sickness; the weeks rolled on, and still we missed his portly figure and familiar face, which for fiveand-thirty years had been as constant to Donjonville as the dial of the old Elizabethan clock, which from the castle-turret looked down upon the parade. Then at length came the sad news that we should never again see the last of the Sticklers' in the flesh. He was dying of atrophy, we were told; he could retain no nourishing food; the daintiest dishes in the world were but a mockery to him now. Humorist as he was, he saw keenly the grim irony of Fate; and the last words he was heard to utter were these, spoken impressively, as he laid his wasted hand upon the arm of his oldest and dearest friend,

'They'll say it was a judgment, and they're right. Tell your friends, when I am gone, that you knew a parson who died of starvation because he had "made a god of his belly.""

Such was the hard measure he meted out to himself. But we judged him more leniently. We all, high and low, remembered only his virtues; we felt that we had lost a rare man in our hero in black, the like of whom we should never see again.

And when we buried him, the little port
Had seldom seen a costlier funeral,"

I.

It was optional with me, of course, to refuse or to accept; but somehow I adopted the latter course. I suppose it was easier to write a letter of acquiescence than of apology; or possibly the latent curiosity which I had kept in check for so long had asserted itself at last, to the defeat of reason and resolution.

Three years before I had spent a week at Forrest Hall; and when I brought my stay to an abrupt conclusion, I had all but registered a mental vow that I would never repeat the experiment of a visit again. Yet Mr. Forrester, my host, had been courteous, even cordial; his wife showed herself as agreeable as a foreigner, who spoke English but imperfectly, could be; and there was no other visible inmate of the house to give umbrage or disturbance. jective may seem expressive; but if it is taken to imply that I suffered annoyance from nocturnal visitants of a spiritual cast, it says too much. It was not thus that my seven days' sojourn at the hall was rendered irritable and almost unendurable. But I need not pause upon a matter which will naturally unfold itself later.

The ad

though the son of his youngest brother, it had been an assumed, almost settled, thing, that I, George Forrester, was to be his heir. The disappointment in these expectations came to me before that ominous and momentous day when the will was opened. Some months before my uncle's decease, I divined that his intentions respecting the disposal of his property had varied, and that for no fault of mine, but through a sudden favour shown to another, changes were made, which were to work strangely on my after-life. The son of his eldest brother came back from a long residence in Italy, with an only and very lovely young daughter. They were naturally invited to Forrest Hall; and before the visit ended I knew that a former estrangement between the uncle and nephew was dissipated by the friendly intercourse of the present, and more especially and entirely by the fascination exercised over the old gentleman by the winning brightness and beauty of Lucia Forrester. Her mother was an Italian, and was still in her own country, while the father and daughter paid this visit of policy to the fastfailing owner of Forrest Hall. They remained with him to the last, and it was found then that, with the exception of a small bequest to myself, the whole of my uncle's property was willed to his elder nephew, in reversion to his only child Lucia. I had met the latter, had spent a fortnight in the house with her, and had ad