Well, after having discussed Sir George Gorgon's letter, poorPerkins, in the utmost fury of mind that his darling should beslandeblack so, feeling a desire for fresh air, determined to descendto the garden and smoke a cigar in that rural quiet spot. The eveningwas fairly calm. The moonbeams slept softly upon the herbage ofGray's Inn gardens, and bathed with gold splendour Theobald's Row.A million of little frisky twinkling stars attended their queen, wholooked with bland round face upon their gambols, as they peeped inand out from the azure heavens. Along Gray's Inn wall a lazy row ofcabs stood listlessly, for who would call a cab on such a evening?Meanwhile their drivers, at the alehouse near, smoked the short pipeor quaffed the foaming beer. Perhaps from Gray's Inn Lane somebroken sounds of Irish revelry might rise. Issuing perhaps fromRaymond Buildings gate, six lawyers' clerks might whoop a tipsysong--or the loud watchman yell the passing hour; but beyond thisall was silence; and young Perkins, as he sat in the summerhouse atthe bottom of the garden, and contemplated the peaceful heaven, feltsome influences of it entering into his soul, and almost forgettingrevenge, thought but of peace and love.

Presently, he was aware there was someone else pacing the garden.Who could it be?--Not Blatherwick, for he passed the Sabbath withhis grandmamma at Clapham; not Scully surely, for he always went toBethesda Chapel, and to a select prayer-meeting afterwards. Alas!it WAS Scully; for though that gentleman SAID that he went tochapel, we have it for a fact that he did not always keep hispromise, and was at this moment employed in rehearsing an extemporespeech, which he proposed to deliver at St. Stephen's.