discovering. Although this was only the first step towards my escape, I could not repress the joyous bounding of my heart when the door turned on its hinges, and I stepped cautiously out on the landing, and then stood listening to the murmur of the voices below stairs. But the most difficult part of my enterprise was still before me; this was to pass without discovery the open door of the room below, and then go down the second flight of stairs to the ground-floor, and so out by the first door I could find. The attempt to succeed at all must be made at once, before the stout man came up stairs, which he probably would do ere long, to look after the safety of his prisoner. Before venturing down in the direction of the voices, I gave one last look round my prison, and examined once more the bonds of the old man; then I blew out the candle, and locked the door; and having removed the key, began to feel my way down stairs, one at a time, pausing to listen between every step. Fortunately, the house was one of the oldfashioned kind, and strongly built; and not the faintest creaking of a stair betrayed my presence. At length I reached a large landing, giving access to four rooms. The door of one of these rooms was only partially closed, and through the opening shone a faint stream of light, while now and then a muttered word or two, whose tones I at once recognized, told me that there sat my captor and his friend. Their conversation was nearly over by the time I reached the landing, but they still seemed to be silently busy over something. What was the nefarious business that occupied them at such an unholy hour? Noiseless as a shadow, I moved forward till I stood on the mat at the entrance to the room. The door was too far closed for me to see the occupants of the room, or for them to see me; but from where I stood, I could see the chimneypiece, and the large pier-glass which stood on it; and in this glass I could see the reflection of the stout man and his firend could see, too, distinctly, what they were doing, which kept them so silent and so busy. They had got the brown leather portmanteau open between them, and were intently examining its contents, which consisted of watches, chains, rings, and pins, together with several small boxes filled, apparently, with precious stones of different kinds-all, without doubt, the proceeds of some great robbery. I stood like one fascinated, forgetting for the moment the danger of my position. At length the stout man spoke. "A very pretty little haul, Master Matthew!" said he. "As nice a stroke of business as I've done for a long time, and neatly done, too, though I say it that shouldn't. I've got two little black leather travelingbags up stairs, which will do admirably to hold the swag. I'll go and fetch them, and then we'll make a fair division, as agreed on, and pack up, ready for a start. I must give a look to that young shaver up stairs, and see that he's all right. I'm puzzled to know what to do with himhang me, if I ain't!" "Stick a knife in his gizzard!" suggested the slim man with a yawn. "No, no; we'll not do that, if I can help it," answered his companion. That's a line of business I've never gone into yet, and I don't mean to, either. My motto is, 'Dead men always do tell tales.' I'd rather have a live one to deal with any day of the week. No, I must think out some plan before morning of disposing of him for a few days till we've got quietly away. Not, mind you," he added, "that I would hesitate to stick a bullet into him, if my blood was up, and I thought he was going to blow upon our little affair." He got up, and pushed back his chair. "Now, you stay here," he said, "while I run up stairs. I shall be back in five minutes, and then we'll go share and share alike." I waited to hear no more, but hardly knowing what I did or whither I was going, sped noiselessly up stairs again. Before coming down, I had noticed on the upper landing a small closet or lumber-room, in which stood a large ragged screen. Intuitively the idea came into my mind to hide for a minutes or two behind this screen, and take my chance of escape in a rush down stairs, while the stout man was engaged with the first surprise of the discovery that would greet him on entering the room where I had been confined. By the time I had reached the landing, the stout man was ascending the lower stairs; and the same instant that I crept behind the screen, he paused opposite the door to feel for his key, and the next moment the door of my prison was opened, and he went in. "Hollo! what's this? Why are you in the dark?" I heard him exclaim; and then I stole from my hiding-place, crossed the landing, and turning the key in the lock, made both him and the old man prisoners, and then rushed down the first flight of stairs at a breakneck pace. I paused for a second or two on the lower landing, noticing, with some surprise, as I did so that the room where the two men had been conferring only a minute before was now in darkness. Why had not the slim man awaited the return of his friend, as the latter had requested him to do? That, however, was a question which just then did not concern me. I had now the lower flight of stairs to descend, and here I was obliged to proceed more cautiously, being unacquainted with the ground. I had turned two corners in safety, and was on the top of the last short flight, when a sudden thundering at the locked door above startled me from my balance, and I stumbled headlong down the remaing stairs, bursting open a door at the foot of them, and landing in a large kitchen, at the other door of which the door leading into the street-stood the slim man, with a very white face, trying with nervous haste to unfasten the bolts, and so let himself out. On the dresser close by his side stood the candle brought from up stairs, and at his feet the portmanteau shut and partially strapped. I understood his little game at a glance, even if his ghastly tell-tale face had not proclaimed it. He had taken advantage of his comrade's brief absence to abscond with both shares of the stolen property, trusting in the darkness to get clear away, and secure the whole of the booty to himself. A look of relief shot over his face when he saw that it was not his terrible comrade come to avenge his treachery. With a snarl of rage, he turned from the door, and drawing a pistol from his bosom, fired it point blank at me just as I was rising from the ground. The wind caused by the bullet stirred my hair, but there was no further damage done, and before he had time to fire again, I had sprung at his throat and we grappled together, and reeled from side to side of the room in a wild struggle for mastery. He was agile and wiry as a panther, and quite my equal in sheer physical strength, for you must remember that I was little more than a lad at that time; and it would perhaps have gone hard with me had I not brought to bear a little trick with the leg which I had learned among the Westmoreland wrestlers, which stole his feet from under him before he knew what was the matter, and brought him crashing to the ground, with me on the top of him. In falling, he struck his head with tremendous force against the edge of the oaken dresser, and the next moment his grasp relaxed, his eyes closed, and a pallor as of death overspread his face. I thought in truth that he was killed. All this time, the stout man was thundering at the door above stairs, making desperate efforts to get out; and as soon as I had struggled to my feet, the instinct to escape, to get away from that horrible house, came over me as strongly as before. I drew the remaining bolts, and opened the door, and felt the cool night-air blow freely over me with a feeling of thankfulness which no words of mine could express. I turned for a moment, as I crossed the threshold, for a last look at my opponent lying motionless across the hearth, and as I did so, my eye fell on the portmanteau, and acting on the impulse of the moment, I seized it, and flinging it over my shoulder, closed the door behind me, and hurried away into the silent streets. To the first constable whom I met, I gave myself and the portmanteau in charge, and was by him hurried off to the station, where I told my strange story in as few words as possible; and four constables were despatched to the house, which was at once recognized from my description, as it had long been looked on with suspicion. When they returned, it was in company of two out of the three inmates of the house; but the stout man had got clear away before their arrival. The slim man, who had recovered his wits by this time, finding the game up, volunteered a confession, the details of which were afterwards found to be substantially correct, and the chief points of which I will now give you as briefly as may be. The jewelry, &c., contained in the portmanteau had been stolen from the establishment of Bellingham & Co., the great jewelers and silversmiths of Mellingshall. Mr. Bellingham's chief assistant and confidential servant was one Matthew Lamplough-he who has hitherto been designated as the slim mana person who had gradually worked himself up from the position of shopboy, till he had become practically the manager of the whole concern, for Mr. Bellingham was getting old, and glad to move some of the cares of business on to more youthful shoulders. But Lamplough's ambition at last overstepped his prudence, as he found to his cost, when he one day asked the old man to give him his daughter's hand in marriage his daughter, who was so handsome and so accomplished, and would some day have thirty thousand pounds to call her own. The old man's reply, as soon as amazement would let him speak, was a peremptory refusal, accompanied by some disparaging remarks on the vileness of Matthew's origin-he had gone to Bellingham & Co's from the workhouse-and followed up by the intimation that he, Matthew, should retain his confidential post no longer, but be put back to the position of an ordinary assistant in the establishment. Matthew vowed to be revenged, and he kept his word. It was while he was in this mood that he made the acquaintance of an individual going by the name of Captain de Vaux -the stout man of my narrative-a gay dashing fellow of insinuating manners, who was staying for a few weeks at the best hotel in Mellingshall. De Vaux was not long before he wormed himself into Matthew's confidence, and heard from his lips the narrative of his wrongs, as he deemed them to be; and then by slow degrees he unfolded a plan by which Lamplough might both revenge and enrich himself at the same time. Matthew stared aghast at the proposal when it was first unfolded to him; but the cunning De Vaux gradually familiarized him with the idea, till at length he seized it with avidity. The first thing to do was to obtain duplicate keys of the strong boxes in which the stock of Bel lingham & Co., was stored in the cellar below the shop. Wax impressions of the genuine keys were easily obtained by Matthew, from which De Vaux had real keys manufactured. After these had been tried, and found to answer, the time for their enterprise was fixed, and all needful preparations made by De Vaux for its successful issue. Mr. Bellingham always left town on Saturday evenings, to spend Sunday at his villa in the country, the premises being left in charge of Matthew and two other assistants. It was agreed that Matthew should ask for leave of absence from Saturday night till Monday morning; and that, after the departure of Mr. Bellingham, he should go down into the cellars, open the safes with his false keys, load his portmanteau with the most valuable property he could find, relock the safes, and then quietly take his departure, as though he were going on his proposed journey. All this was safely accomplished. Lamplough got out of the house without being suspected by his fellow-servants, but not till half an hour past the time agreed on, so that when he and De Vaux reached the station, they found that the last north train had heen gone five minutes. Their plan had been to get down by train to the station nearest De Vaux's house, then take the cab which would be in waiting for them, and so reach home about one o'clock in the morning. Here the spoil was to be divided, the necessary disguises assumed; and by six o'clock on Sunday morning, they were to be on board one of the foreign steamers which started at that hour from a neighboring port, by which means they would be safe out of England before the robbery was discovered. The rest you know. The old man was too cunning to allow himself to be implicated in any way. Captain de Vaux was merely his lodger, he said; as to what his pursuits were, he knew nothing; and he had been requested to take care of me as being a mild lunatic, whom De Vaux was about to conduct to a private asylum. I may mention that in his younger days the old man had been known as a notorious "fence," or receiver of stolen goods. The soi-disant Captain de Vaux was captured several years after in France, for a daring robbery committed in that country, and condemned to the travauxforcées for-I forget how many years. Chambers's Journal. IN SIAM. THERE is now really no knowing what to believe about dead and gone personages, concerning whom we had fondly hoped society had made up its mind long ago. It is, to say the least of it, disconcerting to learn in one's old age, and when the rectification of an opinion is a tedious and painful process, that Henry VIII. was an estimable monarch, of conscientious, scrupulous, and even weakly uxorious tendencies; and that his daughter Mary had nothing whatever the matter with her disposition, but merely labored under unrequited affection and a liver complaint. To discover that Queen Elizabeth never told the truth, even by accident, or when off her guard, is trying; and one longs impatiently to get to the bottom of that everlasting casket in which the secret of the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart lies hidden. One may make up one's mind to having to part with many cherished illusions, and to do a good deal of tardy justice, but one little piece of justice lies enticingly to our hand. Let us do it. established the truth of everything the unlucky Portuguese said, and brought to light a great deal more than he found out; the present age accepts Siam as easily as Southend, and no more thinks of disputing the existence of the ruins of Ongcor, than it thinks of denying the Crystal Palace or Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle. Ought we not, then, to do poor Pinto justice, however tardy, and confess that he was not a liar at all, but, on the contrary, a traveler of intrepid courage and keen intelligence, who labored under the misfortune, more common then than now, but not unheard of even in these days, of living among sluggish and prejudiced people. The latest successor of the maligned Mendez has left a record of his travels as melancholy as it is interesting. M. Henri Mouhot, a French naturalist, whose attainments were well and widely known, went into the innermost wilds of IndoChina, that he might investigate its animal and vegetable productions-that he might estimate the amount and quality of the contributions of the vast and fertile empire to the treasury of naturethat he might bring back to Europe samples of its precious and beautiful possessions, and ascertain what fellowship exists between the living creatures which people its forests, and those with which man is familiar in other and better-known lands. Animated by a spirit of the keenest intelligence, and upheld by great powers of endurance, he went forth to his task, and for four years he performed it ably, in much suffering, and not a little danger. But he never returned. His resting-place is in the heart of a trackless forest, through which he was journeying towards the provinces south-west of China; and the few details which ever reached his wife and his brother are as meagre as they are pathetic. A journal, with scanty records, some half-effaced, but cheerful, hopeful, and courageous; a memorandum of his arrival at a place whose name is left unfinished in the manuscript; a fear expressed that he has taken the deadly jungle fever, then the certainty; anon the last words of all, an appeal that found a speedy answer: "Have pity on me, O my God!" In the sixteenth century, a Portuguese explorer, named Mendez Pinto, visited the distant and mysterious land which is known as Indo-China, or more familiarly as Siam. He made the dreary and dangerous voyage, he explored the wonders of the country, he returned, and narrated his adventures and experiences, and he was rewarded by a grateful public with the most complete and contemptuous incredulity, and by having his name handed down as the type of supreme mendacity. We have even met persons, with confused ideas of etymology, who entertain a notion that his name, Mendez, is "foreign" for a lie. Recent discoveries-the restless and pertinacious persistency with which people will go all over the world, and poke into all its holes and corners, like those distressingly-active housewives who will not leave the unoffending cobwebs in the dark closets and under the stairs alone-have So, in the pursuit of his beloved studies of the great works of the Creator, they impress us with an idea that they in one of the most sublime scenes which possess self-respect, which is never conthe Divine Hand has produced, alone veyed by their Celestial neighbors. It with his Maker, save for the timid com- is refreshing to find a king of Siam who panionship of some simple wild people is a profound and accomplished scholar of the country, Henri Mouhot passed a linguist, familiar not only with the away, thousands of leagues from his home, dialects of Siam and Indo-China, but and without any knowledge of whether also with ancient Sanscrit and Englishhis fate would ever be made known to who is a journalist, too, and writes for those who watched and waited for him the Hong-Kong papers, and is a member at the other side of the world. His na- of the Asiatic Society in London-a tive servants took care of his papers, and learned body of whose awful attributes they reached his brother's hands in safe- we are all aware. The second king is the ty. That gentleman has compiled from brother of the first, and is almost as fine them a narrative which affords us some a fellow. wonderful glimpses of the distant land of Siam, of Cambodia, and Laos, and of human life among the savage tribes which inhabit the mysterious district lying between those countries and Cochin-China. M. Mouhot sailed from Singapore to the Menam, or Mother of Waters, on which Bangkok, the capital of Siam, is built a river so deep and beautiful, that the largest ships coast along its banks in perfect safety, and graceful trees bend their branches over the decks, and the never-silent song of the gorgeous birds enlivens the dream-like voyage. Bangkok is "the Venice of the East," and its almost amphibious inhabitants are very numerous. The whole country was beautiful, but to the naturalist its chief charm lay in the distant mountain-lands; the misty space wooed him with a thousand hints of strange animal life, of rare plants and flowers, of unknown mosses, undiscovered shells, unfamiliar insects, to be given to his exultant grasp, to be studied in solitude, and explained and discussed in the communion of science. But Bangkok was to be his head-quarters, whence expeditions were to be organized; there was much to see there, and notably, the first king, a gentleman of grand and courteous bearing and varied attainments, who received M. Mouhot with distinction, and was at tired in large trousers, a short jacket, and a copper helmet, probably worn in compliment to his own complexion. As we read about the Siamese and their two kings, the impression they create is quite different to that received from other eastern nations. They are more worthy people, if servile in action and gesture; they are less false, less fawning; A splendid prospect lay before the naturalist as he planned out his journey through the fertile valley of Siam, beyond which lies the great mountainchain, covered with perpetual snow, which stretches from Yunam to China. Like two huge giants joining their arms, and encircling an object dear to both, are this chain and that which lies to the west, as far as the Malay Peninsula; and the great river Menam, fertile and fertilizing Mother of Waters, traverses the smiling level from north to south, and pours out her lavish flood into the Gulf of Siam. The great river is the home of the people, and its fish forms their chief and plentiful food. The ethnologist, the philologist, and the historian may find ample materials for study in records which date from five centuries before the Christian era; while the naturalist revels in the treasures of nature, and the artist and antiquary pause and ponder over ruins probably unsurpassed in grandeur and beauty throughout the world. We embark upon the Menam, in M. Mouhot's boat, in company with two boatmen, one an Anamite, the other a Cambodian, and both Christians, M. Mouhot himself, an ape, a perroquet, and a dog, and suffer severely from mosquitoes all the way to Aynthia. The liquid highway is anything but select, for it is the period of the religious fetes of the Siamese, who worship Buddňa; and the river is crowded with long boats, gaily decked with many-colored flags, and gorgeously attired rowers, who try to pass each other, and utter exciting cries. From some of the boats, sweet music floats out over the water, and one, remarkable for its magnificent gilding, is |
