JULIAN TURNS UP: AND THERE'S AN END OF MRS.

TRACY.
There is a muddy sort of sand-bank, acting as a delta to the Mullet, just where it spreads from deep to shallow, and falls into the sea.
Strange wild fowl abound there, coming from the upper clouds in flocks; and at high water, very little else but rushes can be seen, to testify its sub-marine existence.
A knot of fishermen, idling on the beach, have noticed an uncommon flight of Royston crows gathered at the island, with the object, as it would appear, of battening on a dead porpoise, or some such body, just discernible among the rushes.

Stop--that black heap may be kegs of whiskey;--where's the glass?
Every one looked: it warn't barrels--and it warn't a porpoise: what was it, then?
they had universally nothing on earth to do, so they pushed off in company to see.
I watched the party off, and they poked among the rushes, and heaved out what seemed to me a seal: so I ran down to the beach to look at the strange creature they had captured.

Something wrapped in a sail; no doubt for exhibition at per head.
But they brought out that black burden solemnly, laying it on the beach at Burleigh: a crowd quickly collected round them, that I could not see the creature: and some ran for a magistrate, and some for a parson.

Then men in office came--made a way through the crowd, and I got near: so near, that my foolish curiosity lifted up the sail, and I beheld--what had been Julian.
O, sickening sight: for all which the pistol had spared of that swart and hairy face, had been preyed upon by birds and fishes! There was a hurried inquest: the poor general and Emily deposed to what they knew, and the rustics, who escorted him from Oxton.