This piques Madam Henrietta, and she smiles satirically again as she says,—

"Well, sir, I do not want your pretty horse, but, if you insist, why, I cannot retreat. I shall, at least, have the pleasure of returning him to his master."

The captain shakes his head.

"A bet upon such terms is no bet at all, my dearest madam," he says, "for, I assure you, if I win, you will return home curlless, gloveless, and ribbonless. All is fair in war-and love."

With which words Captain Ralph darts a martial ogle at his companion. This piques her more than ever.

"Well, sir," she replies, "if you are determined, have your desire."

"Good!" cries the captain: "we are just in time. There is the horse. Remember, now, Ma'm'selle Clare, that we have lain a wager on the final issue. I bet Selim against a curl, a pair of gloves, and a piece of ribbon, that the Arabian beats the field; Miss Henrietta, that he will not. Voici, I do not ask you to hold my stakes," adds the captain with a laugh as he bows, "for I think that will be as much as his rider will be able to do." And, with another gallant bow, the captain rides away toward the horses.

The boys are again instructed much after the same fashion the signal is given in the midst of breathless. suspense, and the horses dart from their places.

They dart around, Sir Archy again leading; but this position he does not hold throughout the first mile: he gradually falls behind, and when they pass the winningpost he is fifty yards in the rear. His owner tears his hair, but the crowd do not see him: they flush and shout. The second mile is between Fair Anna and the Arabian, and they lock in the middle of it; but the Arabian gradu

ally takes the lead, and when they flash up to the stand he is ten yards ahead. Sir Archy is distanced and withdrawn.

It would be impossible to describe the excitement of the crowd, the tremendous effect produced upon them by this reversal of all their hopes and expectations. They roll about like waves, they shout, they curse, they rumble and groan like a stormy sea.

The horses are the objects of every one's attention. Their condition will go far to indicate the final result; and, Sir Archy being led away and withdrawn, the race now will be between Fair Anna and the Arabian.

Mr. James looks more solemn than ever, and all eyes are turned upon him. Captain Waters is not visible: he is yonder, conversing with the ladies.

But the horses! Fair Anna pants and breathes heavily: her coat is drenched more completely than before with perspiration; her mouth foams; she tosses her head: when the rake is applied to her back a shower falls.

The Arabian is wet all over too: but he breathes regularly his eye is bright and his head calm. He has commenced running. The first intention of Mr. James is to give up the race; but his pride will not let him. He utters an oath, and gives renewed instructions to his rider. These instructions are to whip and spur,—to take the lead and keep it, from the start.

The moment for the final struggle arrives, and Captain Ralph merely says, "Rein free!"

The boys mount: the crowd opens: the drum taps, and the animals are off like lightning.

Fair Anna feels that all her previous reputation is at stake, and flies like a deer. She passes around the first mile like a flash of white light: but the Arabian is beside her. For a quarter of a mile thereafter they run neck.

and neck the rider of Fair Anna lashes and spurs desperately.

They come to the quarter-stretch in the last mile at supernatural speed: the spectators rise on their toes and shout: two shadows pass them like the shadows of darting hawks: the mare barely saves her distance, and the Arabian has triumphed.

If we could not describe the excitement after the second heat, what possibility is there that we could convey an idea of the raging and surging pandemonium which the crowd now came to resemble? Furious cries, shouts, curses, applause, laughter, and the rattle of coin leaving unwilling hands, are some of the sounds. But here we must give up as no mere pen can describe the raging of a great mass of water lashed by an angry wind into foam and whistling spray and muttering waves, which rise and fall and crash incessantly, so we cannot trace the outline of the wildly-excited crowd.

The captain wipes Selim's neck with his white handkerchief, and the panting animal raises his head and whin

nies.

"See, gentlemen!" says the soldier, laughing, while Mr. Howard scowls proudly at him, "morbleu! my horse is merely a little warm,-just come to his speed! Why did I not stake my whole fortune on him?"

And, uttering this preposterous jest, the soldier caresses Selim, who manifests much pleasure thereat; and, sending him back to the stable, mounts his horse and goes and claims his wager from the mortified Henrietta. She takes off the gloves and hands them to him, with the ribbonknot, which she detaches from her girdle with a jerk betraying no slight ill-humor.

"There, sir! at least I am honest, and pay my just debts!" she says: "but please leave my curl."

The captain folds up the gloves, wraps them in the ribbon, and places the whole in the pocket of his surtout.

"Leave the curl ?" he says, laughing. "Oh, of course! But I assure you, my dear Ma'm'selle Henrietta, that my liberality is only for the moment. I shall claim it some day or other. All is fair in war-and love!"

With which words the captain laughs louder than he was ever known to laugh before.

A LETTER TO A DYSPEPTIC.

T. W. HIGGINSON.

YES, my dear Dolorosus, I commiserate you. I regard your case, perhaps, with even sadder emotion than that excellent family-physician who has been sounding its depths. these four years with a golden plummet and has never yet touched bottom. From those generous confidences which, in common with most of your personal acquaintances, I daily share, I am satisfied that no description can do justice to your physical disintegration, unless it be the wreck. of matter and the crush of worlds with which Mr. Addison winds up Cato's Soliloquy. So far as I can ascertain, there is not an organ of your internal structure which is in its right place at present, or which could perform any particular service if it were there. In the extensive library of medical almanacs and circulars which I find daily deposited by travelling agents at my front door, among all the agonizing vignettes of diseases which adorn their covers, and which Irish Bridget daily studies with inexperienced enjoyment in the front entry, there is no case which seems to afford a parallel to yours. I found it

stated in one of these works, the other day, that there is iron enough in the blood of twenty-four men to make a broadsword; but I am satisfied that it would be impossible to extract enough from the veins of yourself and your whole family to construct a crochet-needle for your eldest daughter. And I am quite confident that, if all the four hundred muscles of your present body were twisted together by a rope-maker, they would not furnish that patient young laborer with a needleful of thread.

You are undoubtedly, as you claim, a martyr to Dyspepsia; or, if you prefer any other technical name for your disease or diseases, I will acquiesce in any, except, perhaps, the word "Neurology," which I must regard as foreign to etymological science, if not to medical. Your case, you think, is hard. I should think it would be. Yet I am impressed by it, I must admit, as was our adopted fellow-citizen by the contemplation of Niagara. He, you remember, when pressed to admire the eternal plunge of the falling water, could only inquire, with serene acquiescence in natural laws, " And what's to hinder?" I confess myself moved to similar reflections by your disease and its history. My dear Dolorosus, can you acquaint me with any reason, in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, why you should not have dyspepsia?

My thoughts involuntarily wander back to that golden period, five years ago, when I spent one night and one day beneath your hospitable roof. I arrived, I remember, late in the evening. The bedroom to which you kindly conducted me, after a light but wholesome supper of doughnuts and cheese, was pleasing in respect to furniture, but questionable in regard to physiology. The house was not more than twenty years old, and the chamber must therefore have been aired within that distance of time, but not, I should have judged, more