glad, and I was very welcome. This was what his manner said, as we hobbled him down-stairs to the street and got once more under way for home.
But the sun's taking Billy's likeness was not to be his only honor for that day. We had brought him safely back and refreshed his inner man and given him his expected bundle. The ladies and children were about taking leave of him—his long stick in hand and his face turned towards the mountains where he is to vagrantize for the summer—when it occurred to him to turn and inquire, whether, in that closely-tied and yet unexamined bundle, there happened to be a coat. The old chap's sagacity had smelt out the weak spot in my charity. There was no coat. The fact was, I had looked over my slender remainders of that article, in making up the parcel, and there was nothing I could well spare except a dress coat, for which I have no further occasion in my hermit life, but which would scarce be "a fit" for Billy, besides the proba-Billy-ty of his swopping it for grog at the first wood-chopper's shanty in the mountains. No! I had it to confess to the old man that his feel of the weight of the bundle had told him truly. It was composed only of the light-weighing articles of nether and under wear. But his expression of disappointment was overheard. "Is it a coat he wants?" exclaimed the Hon. S. P. R., stepping forward and pulling off his own (a new summer frock of the latest fashion), and
