PUNCHINELLO

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD, By ORPHEUS C. KERR, Continued in this Number.

See 15th page for Extra Premiums.

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.

CHAPTER XXII.—(Continued.)

When Miss POTTS and Mr. SIMPSON rejoined Mr. DIBBLE, in the office of the latter, across the street, it was decided that the flighty young girl should be made less expensive to her friends by temporary accommodation in an economical boarding-house, and that the Gospeler, returning to Bumsteadville, should persuade Miss CAROWTHERS to come and stay with her until the time for the reopening of the Macassar Female College.

Subsequently, with his homeless ward upon his arm, the benignant old lawyer underwent a series of scathing rebuffs from the various high-strung descendants of better days at whose once luxurious but now darkened homes he applied for the desired board. Time after time was he reminded, by unspeakably majestic middle-aged ladies with bass voices, that when a fine old family loses its former wealth by those vicissitudes of fortune which bring out the noblest traits of character and compel the letting-out of a few damp rooms, it is significant of a weak understanding, or a depraved disrespect of the dignity of adversity, to expect that such families shall lose money and lower their hereditary high tone by waiting upon a parcel of young girls. A few Single Gentlemen desiring all the comforts of a home would not be considered insulting unless they objected to the butter, and a couple of married Childless Gentlemen with their wives might be pardoned for respectfully applying; but the idea of a parcel of young girls! Wherever he went, the reproach of not being a few Single Gentlemen, or a, couple of married Childless Gentlemen with their wives, abashed Mr. DIBBLE into helpless retreat; while FLORA'S increasing guilty consciousness of the implacable sentiment against her as a parcel of young girls, culminated at last in tears. Finally, when the miserable lawyer was beginning to think strongly of the House of the Good Shepherd, or the Orphan Asylum, as a last resort, it suddenly occurred to him that Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, a distant widowed aunt of his clerk, Mr. BLADAMS, had been known to live upon boarders in Bleecker Street; and thither he dragged hastily the despised object on his arm.

Being a widow without children, and relieved of nearly all the weaknesses of her sex by the systematic refusal of the opposite sex to give her any encouragement in them, Mrs. SKAMMERHORN was a relentless advocate of Woman's Inalienable Rights, and only wished that Man could just see himself in that contemptible light in which he was distinctly visible to One who, sooner than be his Legal Slave, would never again accompany him to the Altar.

"I tell you candidly, DIBBLE," said she, in answer to his application, "that if you had applied to be taken yourself, I should have said 'Never!' and at once called in the police. Since SKAMMERHORN died delirious, I have always refused to have his sex in the house, and I tell you, frankly, that I consider it hardly human. If this girl of yours, however, and the elderly female whom, you say, she expects to join her in a few days, will make themselves generally useful about the house, and try to be companions to me, I can give them the very room where SKAMMERHORN died."

Perceiving that FLORA turned pale, her guardian whispered to her that she would not be alone in the room, at any rate; and then respectfully asked whether the late Mr. SKAMMERHORN had ever been seen around the house since his death?

"To be frank with you," answered the widow, "I did think that I came upon him once in the closet, with his back to me, as often I'd seen the weak creature in life going after a bottle on the top shelf. But it was only his coat hanging there, with his boots standing below and my muff hanging over to look like his head."

"You think, then," said Mr. DIBBLE, inquiringly, "that it is such a room as two ladies could occupy, without awaking at midnight with a strange sensation and thinking they felt a supernatural presence?"

"Not if the bed was rightly searched beforehand, and all the joints well peppered with magnetic powder," was the assuring answer.

"Could we see the room, madam?"

"If the shutters were open you could; as they're not;" returned the widow, not offering to stir; "but ever since SKAMMERHORN, starting up with a howl, said 'Here he comes again, red-hot!' and tried to jump out of the window, I've never opened them for any single man, and never shall. I couldn't bear it, DIBBLE, to see one of your sex in that room again, and hope you will not insist."

Broken in spirit as he was by preceding humiliations, the old lawyer had not the heart to contest the point, and it was agreed, that, upon the arrival of Miss CAROWTHERS from Bumsteadville, she and FLORA should accept the memorable room in question.

Upon their way back to the hotel, guardian and ward met Mr. BENTHAM, who, from the moment of becoming a character in their Story, had been possessed with that mysterious madness for open-air exercise which afflicted every acquaintance of the late EDWIN DROOD, and now saluted them in the broiling street and solemnly besought their company for a long walk. "It has occurred to me," said the Comic Paper man, who had resumed his black worsted gloves, "that Mr. DIBBLE and Miss POTTS may be willing to aid me in walking-off some of the darker suicidal inclinations incident to first-class Humorous Journalism in America. Reading the 'proof' of an instalment of a comic serial now publishing in my paper, I contracted such gloom, that a frantic rush into the fresh air was my