humble in manner, yet with a hidden triumph in his creaking voice. "I but dallied with the time till retreating footsteps should have leisure to descend your ladyship's stair

case.

"I see no jest," said Lady Humphrey, curtly; and we have no eavesdroppers here. Pray be good enough to proceed."

patriots need return to his own lodging that night."

"A strange place to be chosen for their conference," said Lady Humphrey.

"A good place, and cleverly thought of," said the little man, beginning to twinkle his eyes about again and to chuckle. "There is not a lonely garret in all London so safe for tell"Iing secrets as the centre of such a mad conceited crowd. But we will dog their steps, my Lady Humphrey, and we will trip them up. Not a vain belle nor silly coxcomb in the place shall be led such a dance as we will lead them. Aha! we will trip them up!"

"Pardon again!" said the little man. delay no longer. It is true there is a matter which I am come to speak of. Our young friend is in London at this moment."

In London!" echoed the lady. "And what of that? Why is he in London "

"For an excellent purpose, your ladyship. Neither you nor I could have a motive more innocent or more laudable. Sir Archie Munro comes to London-to meet a friend."

Lady Humphrey made an impatient gesture.
And the friend?" she questioned.

"Comes from Paris. And is not so much a friend of Sir Archie as of Ireland. A banished patriot, a sufferer in the great cause, who ventures to England in disguise, to carry information to his fellow-rebels, and to seek

it."

Lady Humphrey sat silent and reflecting. "In that case," she said, "if this thing goes well, we shall not require any one in Ireland on the spot." And she thought within herself that Hester might go back to Mrs. Gossamer's at any time.

"If this thing goes well," said Mr. Campion, "all that we can do will be necessarily finished off at once. We shall be rewarded for our services to the value of our services at present. But your ladyship must remember that the goodly consequences of our loyal endeavours And Sir Archie meets him to receive such must be much less important now than they are information, and to give it ?" said Lady Hum- sure to be some six months hence. The evil in phrey, fully aroused now. "This is more than Ireland is growing apace. Next spring, next we had reason to hope for." summer, will see the active operations of a civil "We suppose it to be so, Lady Humphrey-war. Nothing easier than a transfer of prowe suppose it to be so," said the little man,perty then, Lady Humphrey. Not a few paltry growing mysterious and abstracted as her lady- thousands for your trouble, but a wholesale ship's interest got enkindled. transfer-money, lands, goods, and chattels. Nothing to be done but make a bonfire of the escutcheon of the Munros."

66

It is all that we require, is it not ?" said Lady Humphrey, her voice beginning to quaver with the passion of her eagerness.

"If things turn out well, why-yes," said Mr. Campion. "But there's many a slip,' you know, my lady. If this information of mine be worth anything, we must witness the interview."

"Will that be possible ?" asked Lady Humphrey. "Have you people who can manage such a difficulty ?"

"We will look to it ourselves, Lady Humphrey. We will do our own work, and it will be done all the better."

'Lady Humphrey has doubtless intended to grace with her presence the fancy ball at Almack's, which is to be held on the twentieth of this month."

"This is the fourteenth," said Lady Humphrey.

"Go on."

Sir Archie Munro will wear a blue domino," said Mr. Campion, with his eyes upon the ceiling; "and the friend from over the water will wear a black one, with a mask. I am not yet sure who the latter may be. Two or three names have been mentioned. It may prove to be the arch conspirator himself, Wolfe Tone. It will be enough for Sir Archie Munro to be taken in his company. An acquaintance of mine, whom it will not be necessary for me to introduce to your ladyship, must attach himself to our party. And neither of our gallant com

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'-Mr. Campion is fond of proverbs, I observe,' ," said Lady Humphrey, after a grim pause.

"True, true!" said Mr. Campion, rubbing his hands with glee. "And if we can settle Sir Archie's affairs for him now, how silly to run the risk of delay! Excuse me, my lady, but, had circumstances permitted it, what a splendid man of business your ladyship would have been!"

"Pshaw!" said Lady Humphrey, with abrupt displeasure. And she sat silent and reflecting again, thinking within herself that Hester had better not go back to Mrs. Gossamer's as yet.

"And those papers in your hand?" said Lady Humphrey, by-and-by.

"Irish publications," said Mr. Campion, "containing little noteworthy tit-bits of gossip and news. Your ladyship will be amused and encouraged. The wretched old hulk of a country is going to pieces, as we have seen, without fail. And we, my Lady Humphrey, you and I, and mayhap other sensible people, are like the wreckers from the coasts, who dare the breakers to help to put the monster out of pain. Our boat has pushed off about the first, ha ha! and the spoils promise well; but just now and then we get a hint to refrain from laying hands upon the share we have

worked for, till we know that some desperate know before," said Lady Humphrey, folding holes have actually been battered in the ship's up the paper and dismissing the subject. "I have thought it all out long ago. I know how the fools will behave and what they will come to. We had better spend our time in making arrangements for this fancy ball, I conceive."

always lost on Lady Humphrey. Yet in spite of her discouragement, the little man kept up a high flow of spirits; and the company went laughing and jesting into London.

AUSTRALIAN MUTTON.

THREE legs for a shilling, half a sheep for twoand-sixpence. These were the prices of mutton in the Ballaarat Market in the middle of the month of June in this present year, 1868.

Ballaarat, on a Saturday night, is worth seeing. Some thousands of prosperous looking miners and other workmen; hundreds of clerks or storemen and their wives; young lads and lasses, all well dressed, and seldom with a drunken man among them; these look for their provender among rows of fat sheep, magnificent joints of beef, poultry, and rabbits, and, in the season, the various sorts of wild ducks in abundance; a brace of teal for eighteenpence, and, for those who like it, the black swan for half-a- |

crown.

:

they are sent to market and sold according to size for ninepence, sixpence, or fourpence, or are salted and smoked for eighteenpence. Following the process of trade with the rest of the sheep, we come to the boiling-down room; there we find three iron cylinders about eight feet long by three in diameter; into these the foreparts with the fat trimmed from the hind is put; each cylinder can hold three hundred sheep, so we have cooking apparatus for nine hundred.

Each boiler is furnished with perforated false bottoms. When the sheep are packed in, the tops are securely screwed down, steam is forced in at a pressure of from forty to fortyfive pounds to the inch, and they are left to cook. In about seven hours they are done. The fat and oil, i.e. the tallow, is run off by means of a stop-cock near the top. A fat ewe of forty pounds' weight will give about twelve pounds of tallow, so that from the three boilers we should get about ten thousand eight hundred pounds of tallow. This is run into casks holding about eight hundredweight each. A stopcock is also opened near the bottom from which the gravy runs out, smelling deliciously, and one would think making good soup. But it all runs to waste, emptying itself into a swamp. From an iron door at the bottom, the meat and bones are taken; this refuse is pressed, to squeeze out the remaining fat, and is then shovelled out for manure and sold at five shillings a load. So completely is the stuff cooked, that I can crush up the bones in my fingers.

We have yet to follow the heads. These are skinned, boiled, and then given to the pigs, of which there are three hundred. Nothing is done with the blood. Our farmers are not yet enlightened enough to use it, though it may be had for the carting away.

you

The sheep then is thus disposed of: English get the wool and tallow; we Ballaaratians get the legs and tongue; the pigs get the head; the ground gets the refuse, to come to use again, it may be, in golden drop wheat, and which possibly may go to feed your English mouths.

Three legs for a shilling! Suppose we jump into a buggy and trot along a well kept macadamised road for about ten miles out of this city of gold. Here are hundreds of glossy black-coated crows, at first sight just like their English cousins; but the eyes are white-a condition of the iris not uncommon in Australian birds. Rows after rows of sheepskins hang on fences, near a number of low wooden buildings, and a steam waste-pipe: from which the pretty white vapour is rising into the clear blue cloudless sky this is a boiling-down establishment. Here are sheep pens filled with fine wooled merinos: the ewes weighing from forty to fifty pounds the wethers, say some ten pounds more. Nearly all Australian sheep are merinos. Their coats are at present worth about three shillings each, and, when woven by English looms into wondrous fabrics, they may help to dress a duchess. Their carcases, worth about as much, are doomed to go to pot. A couple of men enter the pen and knock a few hundred sheep on the head. They are then immediately seized and dragged into the butchery-which place we also enter, trying at first to pick our way on the gory floor-but soon content to stand anywhere in the blood, which is every- But though this is what we are doing with where. The head of each stunned animal is thousands of our sheep, every week, we do not laid over a brick drain to carry away the want to do it. We had far rather it should blood; a butcher with a keen knife lifts each feed our brothers in the grand old fatherland. head up and cuts the throat; another follows You want mutton and beef. We want to send and cuts out the tongues; the bodies are it to you. How can this be done? Meat may then thrown in heaps ready for skinning. The be preserved, and in many ways. It may be skinner's duty is to skin the beast, disembowel done up in tins. For this, there are several it, and cut off its head. For this he is paid processes, the most common of which is boiling twelve shillings and sixpence a hundred, and will do his hundred and ten a day. The carcases skinned and cleaned, are carried into a cutting-up room, where they are quickly cut into quarters; the fore quarters piled up in one place, the hinds tossed into hampers are then taken into another room where the tails and outside fat are cut from them. When trimmed,

In an adjoining building, Swiss coopers are at work making casks from the silver wattle of Tasmania.

the meat, and at the right moment, when all the air is excluded, hermetically sealing the top of the tin. Or the meat may be tinned fresh, in joints, and certain preserving gases introduced. Some meats thus preserved were placed on board her majesty's ship Galatea, and his royal highness her captain reported very favourably of them. But meat sold in tins is not

popular; folk like to see what they are eating; dense the aqueous vapour by which the and the revelations which came to light some ammonia is accompanied. The gas thus dried years ago have not helped their consumption, is then forced by steam into an iron cylinder though none need be afraid of what is sent immersed in a bath (also on deck), and there by from Australia, for good joints are the cheapest pressure on itself, being a non-permanent gas, things we can put in. Necessity secures our it becomes liquefied. This last vessel is called honesty. Then there is Baron Liebeg's ex- the liquid gas receiver. From this receiver, tract; but most people would rather have a cut the gas in a liquid state is passed by pipes into at a juicy beefsteak than drink a spoonful of the outer compartment of the meat receiver, an extract. We are, however, making extract, immense double cylinder as capacious as may and doubtless a limited market will be found be required. This meat receiver is made with for it. Mutton and beef may be salted. This double casing, its walls perfectly tight, to conwe are doing. Beef hams, mutton hams, rolls tain the liquefied gas, supplied from the liquefied of beef, sides of mutton salted and spiced, are gas receiver. The whole vessel is surrounded to be packed in iron tanks, into which tallow is by some good non-conducting substance, as charto be poured, to keep the meat from getting coal, felt, or gutta-percha; and that is enclosed hard and dry, and you in English markets are to again in a wooden covering, varnished or painted, buy spiced and smoked meats, hitherto sold at so as to exclude all moisture. The inner cylinItalian shops for two shillings a pound, for six- der rests on the bottom of the outer, leaving a pence. But this, appetising as it is, and space at the top of about two inches. At the splendid for breakfasts and lunches, will, we ends are holes large enough to give ingress fear, not satisfy the paterfamilias of middle and egress to men for stowing, unloading, &c. life as his cut-and-come-again dinner joints. These openings are fitted with wooden coverWe in Australia want, and you in England ings fitted round with gutta-percha. want, that the aforesaid pater should be able to go and look out a leg of merino mutton-fed on our plains, and which, perhaps, grew the most perfect wool in the world-or a sirloin of beef fattened on salt bush, and, being able to pinch it with his fingers, and see that it is all right, order it to be sent home, to feed his rough school lads or his sweet English maids.

At the head of a pretty little valley, called La Croza, near Sydney, New South Wales, stands Mr. Mort's refrigerating establishment. To this refrigerating or freezing process we look as a possible means of giving you our fresh meat. Frozen meat is not a new thing, but the difficulty is to freeze and keep it frozen for a three months' voyage, and that through the tropics. Mr. Mort has patented a process, discovered by a Mr. Nicolles, by which it is believed this may be done.

Having thus tried to give an idea of the apparatus, let us endeavour to describe the manner of using it. The gas having been drawn out of the separators, the heated water is forced through two coolers, and from the coolers passes on by a pipe into an iron cylinder called the reabsorber, which is immersed in a water tank. The separator being emptied is again supplied with ammoniacal solution, and the process is repeated; the reabsorber now containing but a very weak solution, is prepared to receive the gas coming to it from the compartment round the meat receiver. Let it be remembered that ammoniacal gas has so great an affinity for water, that water at sixty degrees Fahrenheit will take up six hundred and seventy times its volume of gas. The consequence of this is that when, by opening a stop cock, admission for the gas into the water is obtainable, it rushes The inventor, in his application to the Su-in with great violence, passing from its state of preme Court for a patent, says, "The invention is an application of Professor Faraday's discovery of the liquefaction of certain gases by pressure, and capacity of such gases for absorption of heat in their return from liquefaction." The apparatus erected at La Croza, and intended to be used on board ship, is describable somewhat as follows:

The material used is, the common liquid ammonia of commerce; this being greatly rectified is put into cylinders called separators, the quantity of absolute ammonia in such vessels being indicated by glass gauges. From a small steam boiler, steam is led by a coil which passes into a separator: the object of using the steam, being to heat the ammoniacal solution in the separator, and so to cause the ammonia to be volatilised, or in other words resolved into gas. So gasified, the ammonia is drawn off from the boiler, and conveyed by a series of pipes through a number of coils into a bath or tank of water (which may be on the deck of the ship). The object is to con

liquefaction into a gaseous form, and carrying with it all the caloric or heat contained in the meat it has been surrounding.

It is in this transition, when the liquid expands into a gaseous state, that the freezing or complete refrigeration takes place. Through special details in the apparatus, there is no loss whatever of the chemical substance employed. The compartment round the meat is filled with the icy current from time to time, until all the meat, &c., placed within is frozen to the required degree of intensity. The ammoniacal gas is capable of freezing to one hundred degrees below zero. One hundred tons of meat can be frozen in twelve hours by the apparatus now erected, which, as at present constructed, would take up about thirty tons measurement on board ship. The meat frozen thus for months, when allowed to thaw, is found to have lost none of its flavour, and will keep as long as meat newly killed. Meat and fish kept for six months have been used at the clubs and government houses, and have been pronounced

excellent. The inside of the immense cylinder at La Croza is a dark cavern, covered by a coating of snow an inch or two thick. It is an icehouse of the chemist's fashioning, completely under man's control; Jack Frost's own larder, with the cold of arctic winters in its air. Quarters of lamb, ribs of beef, geese, fowls, rabbits, fish, are hanging up in it, hard and fresh. Some of them have been there for six months.

It is hoped that by this means our Murray mutton and Saltbush beef may help to sustain the English workman, and make abundant meals for the destitute. Ships will require to be specially fitted; but, with all these charges allowed for, it is believed that meat may be carried home and sold at fourpence or fivepence a pound, leaving after all a better profit than could be obtained by conveying the beast to the boiling pot. Doubtless other plans may hereafter be invented, and doubtless there is here a wide field for practical scientific investigation. Of this, at least, we may be now certain, that the problem which has to be solved is one that can be solved; and the generation now living may hope to benefit by a conquest which shall bring us legs of mutton to substantiate its glory.

reach us; whether we should refuse biscuits if they were likely to deprive us of a chance of a second orange, and so on. No stockbrokers on 'Change, no slippery rogues with a new martingale at Wiesbaden, ever speculated more on possibilities than we youngsters did as we brushed our hair to go down after dinner. Then was the time that fruits were enchanted things to us, and always seemed fresh from fairy land.

The Persian melons with the obscure Arabic inscriptions on their rinds worked in white threads, were just those that turned into Cinderella's coaches. Those leather coated chesnuts came from Don Quixote's country. Those little bags of wine, called grapes, grew on the Rhine-perhaps by the Rats' tower where the wicked bishop was eaten up. Every fruit had its story, and was at once a picture and a legend.

That pleasant little combination dish of fruit that they bring you after dinner at a French restaurant, called Les Quatre Mendiants, as strongly suggests a legend, as does the French name for aromatic vinegar-the Vinegar of the Four Thieves. The latter story is, that rubbed over with this pungent liquid, four thieves of Marseilles, during the time of the great plague in that city, succeeded in safely plundering the dead. The Four Beggars is an equally sugges

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE. tive name. Who were these four beggars? In

DESSERT.

ALAS! for that time, "how far unlike the now and then," when, little John the Baptists that we were, with our heads in chargers of frill, we cared not yet for any of those toys of humanity, double firsts, mitres, seats in parliament, fox-hounds, yachts, &c., those unsatisfying toys, and were supremely happy with what we had been expecting for several hours-the fat plump fig with the golden seeds, and the spoonful of West Indian jelly, which were solemnly handed over to us after dinner, on the night of the annual party, by the tall severe gentleman (friend of the family), who evidently regarded our arrival from the nursery with the intensest disgust, thinly covered over by a miserable varnish of gay benevolence.

On those rare dinner-party days it was our habit to prowl round the butler's pantry and keep a bright look out about the top shelves for those green dishes full of almonds and raisins, those piles of oranges stuck proudly with stiff shiny laurel leaves, or those little morasses of golden green preserve, showing dark against the sparkling light of cut-glass dishes, generally supposed in the family to be of priceless value. The search being illegal, the very illegality gave it a kind of charm. It partook of the character of poaching. It became then a serious speculation anong us junior members of the family what there would be, at dessert; whether chesnuts, or if the cherry brandy would be brought out; if there would be a pine or a melon; whether the grapes would go round, and ever

what reign did they live? Did they ever live? Were they Holbein men, with great slashed. sleeves, tasselled with bunches of greasy ribbons-old soldiers of Francis the First, perhaps, who had wrestled with the Swiss ? Were they not grim brown scarred rascals, ripe for the gallows, gashed by Bernese and Oberland halberds, and beaten about by Burgundian partisans; nimble at cutting purses; nimming heavy gold chains; snatching silk cloaks and feathered velvet caps with cameos and jewels at their sides; dexterous at threading crowds at preachings and processionssturdy, resolute, heartless, merry, desperate, Heaven - forsaken scoundrels, living for the moment and under the greenwood tree, with their heads against the dead deer, sleeping away the thoughts of the future? Would not Callot have sharply etched their rags and ribbons, and Rembrandt have watched them through a prison grating, while horrible Abhorson was grinding his axe in the courtyard and blinking at the sun; would not Salvator Rosa have sketched them as they lay on a rock under a shattered oak-tree, gambling with torn and greasy cards for a gold crucifix and a pearl rosary; would not Teniers have pictured them revelling at a village inn, drunk at skittles, tipsy at shuffle-board-swaggering, swearing, pulling out knives, hugging, or stabbing!

It was this same dish about which we once found some stray French verses, written on the back of a wine list in a café in the Palais Royal. They ran, if we may be allowed to roughly paraphrase them, somewhat thus;—and if pointless, they are at least picturesque: