along a mere shelf of rock-on one side a precipice, on the other a fall of a thousand feet, and the river running below.

The passengers crowded into the two middle carriages, which were of the American omnibus form, and heated the stove red-hot. Flasks were brought out; any food collected among the passengers was distributed; the few ladies there cried themselves to sleep. One by one the other passengers subsided into sleep, or, huddled up in their wrappers, waited despondingly, and trying to doze, for the morning.

It seemed hours after, that a strong smell of turpentine and of smouldering burning awoke Castle. He listened in the darkness, heard a crackling of burning wood, and saw the reflection of fierce flame. It appeared to come from both sides, and the redness grew every moment.

His shout awoke all the passengers. They threw open the doors and looked out; some, already scorched, were screaming for help; others were leaping from the windows. The train was fiercely on fire on both sides of them, and the flames were driving before the wind. It was a bright starry night; the snow had now ceased to fall. The roofs and windows of the carriages nearest the engine were blazing with the utmost fury; in half-an-hour there would be no place of shelter left.

"When did it happen?" cried a dozen voices.

"It caught from the stove; yes, that's so," said the malign driver, who had been sheltering by the engine-fire sullenly; "I saw the sparks break out ten minutes ago, and tried to extinguish them; the turpentine carboys broke and spread it. I had never thought of them."

"Gentlemen, let me speak," said the stoker, coming forward from the frightened crowd. "I know who did it. I'll tell all; save me from that man, and I'll tell all. Seize him, or he'll kill me. He wanted to bribe me, and I pretended to agree. He set the train on fire. The station-master at Cumberland hired him to do it. Put a pistol to his head and he'll confess it. I saw him pour out the turpentine and light it. Uncouple the carriages, or they'll all be burned."

The driver did not answer a word, but quick as thought he drew a revolver from his side-pocket; missing the stoker, he shot one of the directors dead. He then ran to the edge of the slope, and plunged down through the snow towards the river. A dozen shots were fired at him, each flash lighting him for a moment as he leaped desperately from rock to rock.

"Castle," said Smiley, who had been hitherto peculiarly quiet, "you fire twice and light me, and I think I can snap him."

Castle did so; at Smiley's second shot the wretch dropped dead and rolled into the river.

"That'll do; he's off the muster-roll," said Mr. Smiley, as he replaced his pistol; "and now, if we could only push back to Cumberland, we'd lynch that etarnal scoundrel of ours right away."

"Uncouple the carriages quick, and save the luggage, then," said the

stoker; "there are luckily three bundles of snow-shoes in the second van; with those on, you can get back to Wingrove in two hours, taking lamps, and keeping to the rails."

Wal, we'll do it, and reward this fellow," said Smiley; "for without him, Castle, here we should have been pretty smartly frizzled up, I guess; it was a near go—yes, sir."

Castle so incited the passengers that in a quarter of an hour the luggage-van was saved; twenty of the most resolute men were mounted on snow-shoes, and the flying army, shouting and cheering, started on their journey, led by Smiley and his son-in-law. The rest remained to build up a shed from the charred timbers, and to light fires for the ladies and children.

Two hours and a half later, the small band of snow-walkers entered the town of Wingrove, and pushed straight for the chief hotel. A dense crowd filled the streets, and torches waved below the central balcony under which three rival bands thundered out election tunes. Every window of the hotel was up, and, cold as the night was, was crowded with faces.

Mr. Sawbridge was at the close of a powerful harangue.

"Fellow-citizens," he said, "my motto is rectitude.' Abe Lincoln's the man to protect our cause from the unhallowed touch of the Log Roller. When Fame mounting her starry throne, and snatching atshall

"Silence!" cried his partisans in the crowd, as the small band headed by Smiley and Castle shouted from below that they wanted the man who'd bribed people to set their train on fire.

"Who is he?" cried the mob; "where is he?"

"That is the man," said Smiley, pointing up to the orator; "hold him fast while I tell our story."

He related it briefly but passionately.

"There are twenty of us here can prove it; he hired a man to run us into the snow, and then burn the train. Take him to gaol. What punishment should such a man have, fellow-citizens ?"

"Death!" roared a hundred angry voices; "fling him down to us. No gaol for him."

They all knew Smiley, and the passengers were many of them their own townspeople.

There was no death, and he

In vain Castle and Smiley supplicated for the unhappy man; the rest of the passengers were as inexorable as the mob. use to waste a trial, they said; the man had deserved shouldn't have a chance of escape.

It was swift justice; inexorable were the men. A few minutes more, and the body of the swindler swung from the hotel balcony, amidst a blaze of light, watched by a thousand fierce faces.

"He was a bad lot," said Smiley to Castle, as they turned away in horror from the yelling crowd; "but I wish he had had a fair trial,

and time to prepare for death. Yet we don't give a rattlesnake time; and if he had got off, there'd have been more pisun for someone else. It's the boys' way in Maryland, when their dander's up. I did think that fellow was one of the most etarnal scoundrels that ever put two dollars together; but I never thought he'd have been so near running us off the line with that plaguey trick of his. But it didn't pay—no, siree-and so he found it."

The swindler's unhappy wife was that night found dead in her bed at Cumberland; whether she died by poison or heart-disease, was never clearly ascertained. Enormous defalcations were discovered in Sawbridge's accounts, and the complicity of the station-master at Piedmont was clearly discovered.

WALTER THORNBURY.

ON STAGE COSTUME

WITH SOME REFLECTIONS ON MY LORD SYDNEY'S RESCRIPT

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

I WONDER on what particular morning of the last past month of January it was that the Lord High Chamberlain (not by any means to be confounded with the Lord Great Chamberlain) woke up and found himself Virtuous. To me, to whom for many years the practice of virtue, combined with that of self-denial and asceticism, has been habitual, and I may say incessant, the manifestation of Purity in what has been termed the "Lord Chamberlain's Charge" to the theatrical managers was productive of the sincerest gratification, not unmingled with lively astonishment. That the Lord High Chamberlain was wise, handsome, witty, refined, noble, wealthy, and splendidly attired-to say nothing of his accomplishment of walking backwards on state occasions, a faculty he shares with his friends the managers, who further add to the feat the deft art of carrying a pair of lighted candles before Royalty,-of these things I had long been aware, but I had no idea that My Lord was so Good. How did it all come about? When did our Sydney first awaken to a conviction of the glaring improprieties of the costume worn by some actresses and many ballet-girls, and by a great many more stagefemales who can neither act nor dance? What long-latent feeling of decorum at last surged to the surface, and impelled his lordship to remonstrate with the directors of our dramatic temples on the sartorial naughtinesses exhibited behind the footlights? Has any Royal Highness been shocked lately at the unseemly spectacle he may have witnessed through his double-barrelled opera-glass? Has any foreign Grand Duchess declared that she will not visit an English theatre again until the skirts of the coryphées are lengthened, or until the young ladies who sing comic songs and dance "breakdowns" in Mr. Burnand and Mr. Gilbert's extravaganzas have become less liberal in the display of their pectoral and femoral muscles, and in the suggestion of their glutei maximi? There must have been some cause for the sudden outburst of prudery on the Chamberlain's part. Can it be that a Bishop has patronised, in disguise, the stalls at the Strand or the Gaiety, and has come away horrified at the revelations in the way of pink tights he has there had unfolded to him? The late Charles James Blomfield, we know, was fond of attending the Italian Opera; but the Right Reverend Prelate never stayed for the ballet.

What the Lord Chamberlain has had to say to the managers of the theatres under his jurisdiction is known by all newspaper-readers—

VOL. VIII.

H

and who is not a newspaper-reader nowadays? I need not minutely recapitulate the terms of his "charge." His Lordship has very temperately and politely hinted to the London impresari that he considers the costume worn in many instances by females on the stage to be so indelicate as to border on the scandalous. The evil, he says, has been gradually augmenting, and is still growing. Many fathers and mothers, he adds, who are fond of the theatre as an amusement, will not consent to allow the juvenile members of their families to witness these indecent performances. In fine, the Chamberlain is anxious that the managers should take counsel with him and with themselves, to devise some means by which this "public scandal" may be abrogated.

This remarkable rescript from the Lord Chamberlain's Office has set me cogitating somewhat deeply. I have been delving in my memory— and there are few pleasanter pastimes, on occasion, than bone-grubbing -and disinterring sundry old facts bearing on the costume adopted on the British Stage within my time.* Let me see if the temperate marshalling of these facts, and a brief statement of the thoughts they suggest, will not help me to decide, to my own satisfaction, if not to that of my readers, three knotty questions: First, is the stage costume actually worn scandalously indecent? Second, was the Chamberlain really called upon to remonstrate with the managers on the sumptuary license which prevails in some theatres? Third and last, will his remonstrance be of any avail; and will the managers forego the cakes and ale, and the ginger hot i' the mouth, with which they supply the frequenters of the private boxes and the stalls, because Lord Sydney is virtuous?

My personal remembrance of London theatres, both before and behind the scenes, stretches back just three-and-thirty years; but my mother was on the stage long before: she "came out" in the part of the Countess Almaviva, in the Marriage of Figaro (Vestris playing Susanna), at old Covent Garden Theatre, under Charles Kemble's management, in the year 1827: so that I was nearly born in a promptbox and christened by the call-boy. A great court lady lent my mamma her diamonds in order to enhance the splendour of her first appearance (which I am afraid was not very successful), and I remember that as a child I used to gaze long and wistfully upon the Countess Almaviva's portrait, life-size, in crayons, by Mr. Drummond. That was my first initiation into the mysteries of stage costume; but increased familiarity with matters theatrical very speedily convinced me that real diamonds

* "When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself, that, were the offer made to me, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, the errors of the first. Were this, however, denied me, still would I not decline the offer. But since a repetition of life cannot take place, there is nothing which, in my opinion, so nearly resembles it, as to call to mind all its circumstances, and, to render their remembrance more durable, commit them to writing."-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Autobiography.