Neptune finding himself addressed, awoke leisurely from his slumbers, and fixed his eyes on mine with an affirmative expression.

“Ay, to be sure you are; and a capital swimmer too!”

Neptune raised his head from the rug, and beat the ground with his tail, first to the right hand, and then to the left.

“And is he not a fine faithful fellow?  And does he not love his master?”

Neptune rubbed his head against my hand, and concluded the conversation, by again sinking into repose.

“That dog’s a philosopher,” I said; “He never says a word more than is necessary:—­then, again, not only blest in love and friendship, and my dog; but what luck it was to sell, and in these times too, that old, lumbering house of my father’s, with its bleak, bare, hilly acres of chalk and stone, fat eighty thousand pounds, and to have the money paid down, on the very day the bargain was concluded.  By the by, though, I had forgot:—­I may as well write to Messrs. Drax and Drayton about that money, and order them to pay it immediately to Coutts’s,—­mighty honest people and all that:  but faith, no solicitors should be trusted or tempted too far.  It’s a foolish way, at any time, to leave money in other people’s hands—­in anybody’s hands—­and I’ll write about it at once.”

As I said, so I did.  I wrote my commands Messrs. Drax and Drayton, to pay my eighty thousand pounds into Coutts’s; and after desiring that my note might be forwarded to them, the first thing in the morning, I took my candle, and accompanied by Neptune, who always keeps watch by night at my chamber door, proceeded to bed, as the watchman was calling “past twelve o’clock,” beneath my window.

Blackwood’s Magazine.

* * * * *

TO THE LADY BIRD.

  “Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! fly away home”—­
    The field-mouse is gone to her nest,
  The daisies have shut up their sleepy red eyes,
    And the bees and the birds are at rest.

  Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! fly away home—­
    The glow-worm is lighting her lamp,
  The dew’s tailing fast, and your fine speckled wings
    Will flag with the close-clinging damp.

  Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! fly away home—­
    Good luck if you reach it at last: 
  The owl’s come abroad, and the bat’s on the roam,
    Sharp set from their Ramazan fast.

  Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! fly away home—­
    The fairy bells tinkle afar,
  Make haste, or they’ll catch ye, and harness ye fast
    With a cobweb, to Oberon’s car.

  Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! fly away home—­
    But, as all serious people do, first
  Clear your conscience, and settle your worldly affairs,
    And so be prepared for the worst.

  Lady Bird!  Lady Bird! make a short shrift—­
    Here’s a hair-shirted Palmer hard by;
  And here’s Lawyer Earwig to draw up your will,
    And we’ll witness it, Death-Moth and I.