and rendered him vacillating and thoughtless as a child. He had walked round in a circle without knowing it, and when day broke, found himself not far from the very spot where he had set out-so, at least, it was conjectured by the footprints tracked over the snow. Once, it appeared, he had sat down, as if to die, but the desire of life was too strong, and he arose and went on. That unaccountable impulse that impels murderers to their ruin drove him, it is further conjectured, to knock at the door of that very inn where himself and his brother had been happy inmates but a few hours since.

Avarice, heightened by a rankling hatred, and superstitious terror suddenly paralysing a mind already shaken by a night of conflicting passions, were sufficient motives to impel a bad heart to crime, and, indeed, ample causes by which to explain this sudden retribution. The Sexton's brother was buried in the very restingplace that he had prepared for another.

139

SIDMOUTH'S STORY.

INTRODUCTION TO THE LITTLE
BLACK BOX.

ANOTHER month, and two more men besides Sidmouth were affected with snow blindness, and had to adopt crape spectacles, which soon relieved them. A week after this dissemination of the disorder, Captain Beaver served out crape spectacles (of which we had luckily a good store from that very excellent optician's nearly opposite the Admiralty), and ordered all the crew, officers included, to wear them. The dreadful disease Siderfin, who had been in Egypt, considered very analogous to ophthalmia, and attributed it to the changes

of temperature experienced in going from the ship to the ice coast.

A few days after this two men began also to complain of their gums, and showed symptoms of unmistakable scurvy. This we soon abated by doses of lemon essence, and by having some mustard and cress in the cabin, which vegetables, mixed with the young leaves of peas that we succeeded in inducing to sprout, soon relieved them.

About this time the Captain's dog, straying from the ship to associate with the wolves, who sometimes sent him home much bitten, was pursued to the ship by a polar bear, which a party of our men attacked with pikes and killed, first wounding him with a musket bullet, but losing the body, however, in a deep hole gnawn by seals in the ice.

A day or two after this we had a visit from a party of three Esquimaux, who were hunting musk bulls, of the scented flesh of which these people are singularly fond. They wore bundles of dirty fur, and conversed

as much by their gestures as by the English words, "with a will, pull away," the oaths, &c. that they picked up. We bought of them some canoe paddles, a bow and arrow, and a harpoon. The men would have made them drunk, but Captain Beaver forbade this, and even punished one of our main-top men for selling them his grog for some ptarmigan and seal's flesh, which he wanted to make a feast of with his messmates.

It was the night the Esquimaux left us that Sidmouth's clever historical story was begun to be read aloud to us by Captain Beaver-ore rotundo, as the saying is.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOX.

A STORY OF THE SHAFTESBURY PLOT.

CHAPTER I.

THE DARCYS OF CROW'S NEST; OR, THE OLD CAVALIER SQUIRE AT HOME.

CROW'S NEST was an old Tudor mansion, distant some twelve miles from Oxford, whose countless towers and steeples might, indeed, be seen on a clear day from a hill at one end of the Home Park. In the days of ruffs and farthingales the house had been the gathering point and centre of hospitality for the whole county: nor did Queen Elizabeth,