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"Morbleu !" exclaimed the competitors, "who would have expected that? Hubert will take after his father, the gamekeeper-a good dog of a good breed. Three fine pieces of plate, worth twelve pistoles if they are worth a farthing!"

Hubert, so pale a moment before, was now red with excitement. "Forty crowns to take to my mother!" he said; and he was ready to dance for joy. Others, however, quickly followed in his footsteps, anxious for the second prize. Hubert remained, looking on. "Since I won the first prize by a single shot," he began to say to himself, "why should I not win the second? The white hare's foot will ensure success for the one as well as for the other." So he entered the lists for the second, and won it. Then he entered the lists for the third and the fourth, and one after the other he carried off all the prizes, to the infinite astonishment of the lookers-on, who could not understand whence such surprising skill came from. When Hubert started for his home, he bore away with him prizes of the value of eight hundred francs. As he followed the banks of the Morin, he began to reflect upon what he would do with his money. He would have a bit of land, he said; but he should also want a cottage and some furniture; his mother must be made comfortable, they were so poor! After all, eight hundred francs was very little, he wished he had more. Just as he had arrived at this conclusion, a gun went off from a bed of osiers close by, and he fell to the ground. A moment after a man rushed upon him, and after stunning him with the butt-end of his gun, he robbed him of all his money. When Hubert recovered his senses, he reproached himself bitterly. "Ah!" he said, "I was warned to be moderate in my desires. If I had been satisfied with one prize, I should not have excited the cupidity of others. I shall know better another time." At this moment he heard the sound of a cart approaching. It was a farmer, who was returning from the festival with his wife and daughter. Seeing Hubert lying by the roadside, he got down to his assistance, and on discovering what had happened, he lifted the wounded man into his cart, and conveyed him to his own house.

Hubert was a long time in recovering. During his illness he was kindly attended to by Lise, the good and pretty daughter of the farmer, and gratitude, it is well known, is akin to love. So he resolved, if ever he got well, to make his nurse his wife. But Thomas le Tellier, the farmer, knew the value of money, and he was not the man to give his daughter to the penniless son of a murdered gamekeeper. So Hubert determined to work, and he did so with so much success, that he was soon enabled to enter into business for himself. Business prospered in the same remarkable manner to the possessor of the white hare's foot, and Hubert soon became wealthy. There was only one drawback to his happiness, and that was that Lise loved another. But this did not make him the less resolved to make her his own, and as he was now rich, Thomas le Tellier backed his suit, and they were married. He was not long, however, before he repented of his folly. Saint Julien is the patron alike of sportsmen and of jealous people. Hubert was both. One day, being out shooting, he became disgusted with the sport, and resolved vary it with la pipee. This amusement, which Alexandre Dumas describes at great length, and no small exaggeration, in his pseudo-sporting

books, consists in imitating the cries of the jay and the magpie, which brings other birds around to see what has befallen their enemies. But when Hubert went into a wood to practise this "recondite art of venery, it did not answer; no birds came. There must, he thought, be some one else in the wood, so he determined to explore, and what should he find but his wife, in company with her lover. In the passion of the moment Hubert fired, and killed his rival.

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Hubert was taken off to prison, and as if the cup of bitterness was not sufficiently full, news was brought to him that his mother, now long neglected, had died. My mother! my good mother!" he exclaimed "who will give me back my mother ?" The fairy appeared to him in his grief, and said to him, "Hubert, you ask for what is impossible; but ask for anything else and your wishes shall be granted to you."

"No!" exclaimed the prisoner, "I will ask for nothing more. If I had not asked for the prizes, I should not have been wounded; if I had not obtained wealth, I should not have been married; if I had not wedded, I should not have been betrayed; if I had not wished to know the truth, I should not have killed my rival. Above all, if all this had not happened to me, I should not have quitted my good mother." And he wept in the depth of his agony.

"Hubert! Hubert!" he suddenly heard in a familiar voice, “take care what you are about, you are burning your shoes. What a troubled sleep you have had. What have you been dreaming about?"

"Oh, Heaven be thanked!" exclaimed the young man, as he gradually came back to his senses; "it is all a dream, and my mother has not been taken away from me, nor have I killed my rival."

At this moment some one knocked at the door, and when Hubert opened it a stranger walked in, and inquired if he was the son of Antoine Roblot? To his answer in the affirmative, he said, "I am the steward of M. le Comte de Bersigny, and he has sent me to tell you that as you cannot, on account of the prejudices of the neighbourhood, be appointed to your father's place, he has interceded in your favour with the Marquis de la Garangère, who has named you one of the gamekeepers to his estates in Brittany. You are to have a cottage on the borders of the wood, and here are fifty crowns in advance. Your mother is to be employed at the Château la Garangère."

There is what I call an honest master !" exclaimed the sick woman "a master who does not forget the child of an old servant. Oh, I will pray Heaven for him!"

Hubert embraced his mother, and he said to himself, "Well, Heaven knows best what is good for us; we must leave to Providence the superintendence of our destiny, and we must be thankful for that which is refused as well as for that which is given to us. He knows best."

MY FRIEND PICKLES;

AND SOME SOCIAL GRIEVANCES OF WHICH HE DESIRES TO COMPLAIN.

BY ALEXANDER ANDREWS.

IV.

THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF COUNTY COURTS.

I BELIEVE my estimate of human character is generally and in the main correct, although it is rated at much under its value by Mrs. Pickles, who generally sees the opposite side of the subject; and consequently, like the two knights in the old story, we seldom form the same opinion of the same man, woman, or child. To say nothing of her never appreciating the literary taste which, I will not say adorns, but softens down my own character, I have only to express an opinion that the servantmaid is pretty, good-tempered, or obliging, to elicit from Mrs. P. a conviction that she is a brazen, good-for-nothing drab; and if I so much as breathe a suspicion that Mrs. Potter is torturing poor Potter into his grave, I am called to order, and requested to observe that she is a strong-minded woman, and is leading poor, weak, silly Potter through the world. She is leading him at a great pace, and will soon have him out of it, I still maintain, and, if he don't make a stand and declare he'll go no further, he's a lost husband.

But although our opinions of people in general, and of individuals in particular, frequently differ-and I generally defer to Mrs. Pickles's judgment-I often have cause afterwards to feel that mine was right, and that I ought to have acted upon it. There was that fellow, Scamp, the builder, for instance, who erected our modest villa, with his ten-inch walls and his dummy drains-why, that infamous tradesman had "Rogue" branded on his forehead, lurking in the corners of his eyes, playing about his great mouth, and yet Mrs. Pickles wouldn't see it. He talked her over with fair promises of large cupboards in every room-pooh! they will not hold two rows of jam-pots; in fact, contain nothing but wind, which they send out into one's neck and ears from their deceitful keyholes. Now this fellow, who robbed me of my healthy gravelly soil, and gave me in exchange those hideous remains which were discovered under the kitchen floor, not content with defending an action which I brought against him for breach of contract, and then passing through the Insolvents' Court for damages and costs, was no sooner set up in business again upon a third-class certificate (which, like railway carriages, is as good as the second class), awarded him by a doting commissioner who pities the poor debtor, but has not a grain of commiseration for the poor creditor-no sooner, I say, was this fraudulent man again started on apparently a larger way of business than before, than he sent me in a claim for seven pounds thirteen shillings for work which he pretended was not included in the con

tract.

"Of course you will not pay it, my dear," said Mrs. Pickles, whose eyes were opened to the enormity of this builder's villany at last. "Pay it!” cried I," of course not! I will rot in gaol first!"

This was a mere figure of speech, of course, but it made a great impression upon little Master Willy, my youngest boy, who, with a large piece of very much buttered bread in each hand, clang to me frantically, and vowed he would go with me.

"What shall Mary tell him when he calls again?" asked Mrs. P. "Tell him? To go to the

"Mr. Pickles! Mr. Pickles!" cried my wife, very properly. "Remember, you are a family man !"

"Tell him simply, then, my dear," I replied, recovering my composure, and with calm dignity, "that I decline paying him."

Next day, when I came home, I was greeted with the information that "that Scamp" had been again, and was exceedingly abusive.

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By Jove!" I exclaimed, in my wrath, "I will take a summons out against that fellow !"

"He says he will take one out against you," rejoined my wife.

But I knew better than that; I always read the law reports, and I knew well enough that his insolvency was a bar to his claim.

That he intended to try the effect of a reckless threat was, however, soon made manifest by the arrival of a summons, citing me to Steeple Bumpkin County Court, in whose district Prickleton was situated, to answer the unjust claim of Mr. Scamp, the builder.

Now I am exceedingly averse at all times to making a public appearance-because I have generally come out of such exhibitions with a considerable sacrifice of dignity-and especially so to being made the sport of counsel in a court of law. I never was successful in that line; nor do I believe anybody ever was. I have no faith in your Sam Wellers who can talk down a counsel or bully a judge; I'm sure I cannot. Mrs. Pickles says I'm too meek-in fact, she goes so far as to deny my power of saying "Bo" to a goose. But as I should, of course, never think of saying or doing anything so ridiculously childish, I do not consider that any great disparagement. I remember being made to cut a terribly foolish figure at Westminster once, by the unfeeling brutality of a judge, who no doubt saw I was rather nervous. I was serving on a jury: the case we had to try was so simple that the judge suggested an amicable arrangement, and the counsel assented. Whilst they were in consultation, the judge, who appeared in a jocose mood, and was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, awaiting the result, addressed us of the jury in a friendly, colloquial strain.

"I know they will agree," said he, with a merry twinkle of the eye. "It's the best course in a case of this kind, and saves unnecessary expense."

The jury concurred with a smile, but as the judge's merry eye fixed itself so intently upon me that I thought he must be addressing me particularly, and it appeared excessively foolish, not to say rude, for twelve men to sit grinning at a judge, I felt called upon to reply to his observations.

"To be sure, my lord," I assented, politely. "I remember reading

of a case once

My goodness! What had I said or done now? The judicial countenance positively swelled with passion, the merry twinkle was no longer in the judicial eye. But, in a transport of fury, while the breath of the entire court was suspended in awe, his lordship stormed out:

"How dare you address the bench, sir? What do you mean by it ?" Here was a pretty thing! I, Civis Britannicus, and something morea British juryman-was asked in a public court of justice, before a tittering bar and a staring audience, how I dared to open my mouth, when to have done otherwise would have appeared grossly unpolite and even idiotic.

"Dear me, sir," I began, calm, but apologetical

"My lord," the clerk was heard to suggest.

"My lord, I beg pardon-"

"Hold your tongue, sir!" roared the frantic figure on the bench, "or I will commit you!"

Oh, horror of horrors! to some mouldy, rat-infested dungeon, perhaps, under the court; for it was now sufficiently plain to me that I had been guilty of some terrible breach of its rules.

"Sit down, sir! sit down! You ought to be ashamed of yourself," continued the judge.

I sat down, of course, hot, flurried, and abashed, but not yet done with; for on the counsel announcing that their clients had agreed to terms, and the judge dismissing the jury without calling upon them for a verdict, he took occasion to observe that perhaps it was the most fortunate for all parties, "with such an impracticable juror in the box."

I am sure I was very near apoplexy on that occasion. Suppressed passion, smothered pride, burning shame, and mortal fear, had nearly made wild work of me. Yet, well remembering this terrible and humiliating scene, I was resolved to stand up like a man, and resist the claim of my fraudulent builder.

So away we started-I and two respectable tradesmen, who were prepared to prove a monstrous overcharge in the cab (by the way, Mrs. Pickles insists on calling it a fly; but for the life of me I cannot discern the difference, and the proprietor himself calls it a cab) which carried me to Dr. Flashley's, but with a degree or two more confidence, for, as I exclaimed, on entering the vehicle:

"Thrice armed is he who has his quarrel just!"

"Mind, Felix," cried Mrs. Pickles, with her parting benediction; “mind, be firm-don't give way, now."

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"I feel a rock of firmness here," I replied, smiting my bosom. "Give way! I should think not, indeed!"

It was a pretty country drive of four miles; for here be it explained that the desirable freehold estate which has been parcelled off for building purposes the Turtledove district, as I may call it-stands so delightfully aloof from the bustle and nuisance of business, that the nearest shop (except a miserable attempt at selling ginger-beer, a penny paper, "best shag tobacco at 3d. an ounce," apples and barley-sugar, very much by retail, and by the light of a small window by day, and a single candle by night)-I say the nearest shop, in the metropolitan sense of the word, is two miles nearer London, and the poor-rate collector's, the church, the parish surveyor's, in fact, all the parochial offices, including the fireengine and police-station, and the County Court, four miles lower down the road, in the old village, or little market-town, as it calls itself, of Steeple Bumpkin.

My two witnesses made quite a holiday of it. They suggested a smoke

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