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their domestic hearth had rushed home through the dust with her clothes in both hands, and was now sleeping in a contrite mood in the back room. There was a smothered scream to begin with, and I could hear the fond mother get out of bed with a “woosh!” and scuttle on two ponderous feet down a passage, and into the apartment on the other side of mine. Then I recognized that a crisis was at hand, and I grasped the floor with both hands, for it was certain that this explosive ancestor would either weep the roof off with tears of joy, or else would spank her prodigal daughter there and then, and in either case I expected the house to totter on its foundations. As it happened, she did both, but it only accelerated the row in a very small degree, and I felt comparatively resigned—on the floor. There was a reconciliation first of all, and the young wife rested her tired head on her parent’s capacious bosom and forgot her woes—the bosom was hollow, and the head seemed to be uncommonly hard, and I could hear the concussion as they came together. And when the first pathos of the scene was over the mother evidently remembered her off spring’s shortcomings, and hit her on both ears with a dishcloth or some similar weapon. But presently they became reconciled again and went to sleep in each other’s arms, and the old prosaic father slept placidly in the other room, and there was a great calm and oblivion that lasted till after daybreak. For a time I sat and looked at the lights and shadows which the moon described on the mountains beyond the river, but after a while the mountains grew hazy and indistinct, and the shadows commenced to dance a fantastic waltz before my eyes, and next I put the wrong end of my pipe in my mouth, and came back to consciousness just as I swallowed half a pint of ashes. I coughed up most of the consignment, and ate the rest, and then I retired once more, with my head at the lower end of the bed and my feet up in the air, and slept a dreamless sleep.
    When I awoke at last someone was ringing a breakfast-bell at the keyhole, and there was over a quart of water in my upper ear. A tropical thunderstorm was raging outside, and a cooling stream of rain descended through the roof just above my head, while another cataract came down in a refreshing manner on my feet. Also the room was nearly afloat, so I dressed hurriedly in the passage. A wild, confused argument was in progress downstairs, for the bridegroom of yesterday had come along at an early hour to demand his wife, and was vociferating in. the bar. The storm, it appeared, had aroused him from a deep slumber at the back door of his deserted home, and inquiries in various directions elicited the information that the angel of his fireless hearth had been seen in a state of distraction outside her father’s public-house in the early hours of the morning. He demanded her immediate return, but the young lady remained in bed and sent down a message that for the future they must look upon each other as strangers, and the landlord sat on a keg in a corner and leaned his harassed head against the wall, and the landlady stood with a stony glare behind the bar, and professed to regard the visitor as a perfect stranger who had dropped in by accident in search of refreshment. This was the situation at nine o’clock, but at half-past nine the bride came downstairs and threw herself into her husband’s arms, and at a quarter to ten the husband was drinking affably along with his father-in-law, and at ten o’clock the landlady cast off both him and his wife in a tragic manner, and renounced them for ever. Viewed by daylight I discovered that the heroine was an exceedingly long girl of about seventeen, with a flame-coloured head and a nervous wink in the left eye.
    When they were gone the bereaved mother proceeded, with an air of Roman fortitude, to count the horn-handled two-pronged forks and other portable articles. Whether they were all there or not I never