would think she took me for a slave, and wanted to feed me up fat before she sent me to market to be sold."
"Then she is so curious and inquisitive," resumed Abelard. "When she saw me bow to Master Edric just now, she was quite in a fever to know who he was; but I would not satisfy her."
"Master Edric!" exclaimed the baronet. "What, then! have you seen my son?"
"Yes, your honour, and it startled me so that it made me raise the adnatæ of my visual organs like one of the anas genus when the clouds are charged with electric fluid; and my heart leaped from its transverse position on my diaphragm, and seemed to stick like a great bone right across my œsophagus.
"How did he look?" asked Sir Ambrose.
"Not that I feel the slightest anxiety respecting him. No—no, his own conduct has quite precluded that."
"He was in a balloon, and when he saw me, he wrote something on a piece of paper
