"Neat little brown silk umbrella, with an ivory handle."
"W'y, I wouldn't wonder if that was your humbreller in the corner now in the reading-room, sir."
I make haste to look. Yes, there it is, my beloved, long-lost umbrella, quietly leaning against the wall in a dark corner, behind a pillar, behind a big arm-chair, where nobody ever placed it, I'll take my oath, but this rascally waiter, who expects to get a shilling for showing where he hid it.
"Is that your humbreller, sir?" the waiter says, rubbing his hands and getting in my way as I walk briskly out, at peril of being stumbled over by my hurrying feet. I scorn to reply, but I give him a glance of such withering contempt that I trust it pierced to his wicked heart, and will remain there, a punishment and a warning, to the last day of his base life. An English waiter's hide is very thick, however. He has probably hidden many a gentleman's umbrella since.
At eleven o'clock we are back in our cozy London lodgings, and at twelve we are sleeping the sleep of profound fatigue, and dreaming of ghostly monks wandering among the weird old ruins of Netley.
WIRT SIKES.
DAY-DREAM.
Here, in the heart of the hills, I lie,
Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky—
An amethyst and an emerald stone