got in first, and, without taking any notice of me, seated himself on the farther side.  In got the man in black, and seated himself nearest to me.  “All is right,” said I, as I shut the door, whereupon the postillion cracked his whip, and the chaise drove out of the yard.  Just as I shut the door, however, and just as Mr. Platitude had recommenced talking in jergo, at the top of his voice, the man in black turned his face partly towards me, and gave me a wink with his left eye.

I did not see my friend the postillion till the next morning, when he gave me an account of the adventures he had met with on his expedition.  It appeared that he had driven the man in black and the Reverend Platitude across the country by roads and lanes which he had some difficulty in threading.  At length, when he had reached a part of the country where he had never been before, the man in black pointed out to him a house near the corner of a wood, to which he informed him they were bound.  The postillion said it was a strange-looking house, with a wall round it; and, upon the whole, bore something of the look of a madhouse.  There was already a postchaise at the gate, from which three individuals had alighted—­one of them the postillion said was a mean-looking scoundrel, with a regular petty-larceny expression in his countenance.  He was dressed very much like the man in black, and the postillion said that he could almost have taken his Bible oath that they were both of the same profession.  The other two he said were parsons, he could swear that, though he had never seen them before; there could be no mistake about them.  Church of England parsons the postillion swore they were, with their black coats, white cravats, and airs, in which clumsiness and conceit were most funnily blended—­Church of England parsons of the Platitude description, who had been in Italy, and seen the Pope, and kissed his toe, and picked up a little broken Italian, and come home greater fools than they went forth.  It appeared that they were all acquaintances of Mr. Platitude, for when the postillion had alighted and let Mr. Platitude and his companion out of the chaise, Mr. Platitude shook the whole three by the hand, conversed with his two brothers in a little broken jergo, and addressed the petty-larceny looking individual by the title of Reverend Doctor.  In the midst of these greetings, however, the postillion said the man in black came up to him, and proceeded to settle with him for the chaise; he had shaken hands with nobody, and had merely nodded to the others; “and now,” said the postillion, “he evidently wished to get rid of me, fearing, probably, that I should see too much of the nonsense that was going on.  It was whilst settling with me that he seemed to recognize me for the first time, for he stared hard at me, and at last asked whether I had not been in Italy; to which question, with a nod and a laugh, I replied that I had.  I was then going to ask him about the health