"No. I have not seen Mrs. Steiner since my return to England," said he. "I called at my former lodgings, and they informed me of everything. They told me where I might find you, and I preferred calling upon you first."

"Well, Steiner," said I, rising, "I am sorry to hasten you, but it grows very late."

"Ha! ha!" cried he, not heeding me; "I hear you have done something for the boy, and provided for Louisa. Well, it's generous of you; I will say that. She's altered, eh! not quite so handsome? But you always liked her, you dog! I knew that." I sat down, in utter and mute surprise at the man's baseness. "And old Bromley 's gone too," he resumed. "Well, we must

all go! The law of nature they call it."

I must beg you to defer your business till to-morrow morning," said I in disgust. "I will not be kept up any longer!"

No, no," returned he decisively; "I can't do that. If Bromley could have deferred his death till to-morrow he would have done so, I dare say; but he couldn't. I can't defer my business!" "What do you want?" said I peremptorily.

"Money!" answered Steiner. "Come, Gibson; I know you're a good-natured fellow. I want a hundred pounds."

"A hundred pounds!" and I drew back in surprise.

"No nonsense, my gentleman!" cried Steiner, tapping the table with the hilt of the dagger. "You know, and I know that you set fire to that house in Wardour-street. You ruined us. You reduced us to beggary. I must have this money !—I must—must!”

The old feeling entered into me which I had years ago encouraged, and by whose power I had successfully wrought out my vengeance. "Must?" said I; "must, Mr. Steiner? that is a word I never obeyed in my life!"

"Time you began!" said Steiner with a sneer. "Come, Gibson, you are no match for me; you know it. You tried me once, and you were wanting. You are alone in the house. I have you in my power!"

"What do you mean?" said I, but I was not alarmed. do you purpose?"

"This!" cried he, and he unsheathed the dagger.

"What

"Your life," said I promptly, "your life, Steiner, will answer

it!"

"What is it to me?" he returned. "What is yours to you is the question! Will you let me have the money?"

"No!"

"You will not?"

"No!" I thundered. "Steiner, I shall sell my life dearly! Never shall a beast like yourself extort money from me by force-by intimidation!"

I said more, but I know not what; and grappled with him. He was a powerful man, but had become enervated by excess. I learnt that afterwards. And the wine he had taken, although it had stimulated his brutal nature, had deprived him of that advantage which is derived from quickness of eye and directness of aim. I, too, had grown stronger since we were last opposed to each other.

He had wounded me in the arm before I closed with him, and

wrested the dagger from his hand. The struggle was then short, compressed, and deadly. We fell to the earth together. Steiner's hold upon me seemed to relax, - a faintness overcame me, - the room appeared to go round rapidly,—and I sank into insensibility. When I recovered my senses, and arose, which I did with difficulty, I found the candles burnt out, and the daylight streaming through the shutters. Why was I here? What had happened? It was a hideous dream! I made an effort to approach the window, but I stumbled over something on the floor. It was Steiner, -the lifeless body,-the corpse of Steiner! I had killed him! His neckcloth told me that I had strangled him!

THE DYING CHILD.

"SHALL I meet thee again, my child—my child ?
Shall I meet thee again, my child,

Roaming along by the hill side free ;
Bounding away with boyish glee

In the evening sunbeam mild?

Oh! down by the flood, in the tufted wood,
Shall I meet thee again, my child?"

"Mother, no; the mountain path

No longer is mine to see;

And the glow of the summer sunbeam hath
No warmth or joy for me!

Oh! never again by cliff or glen

Shall my footstep wander free!"

And shall I not meet thee again, my child,
Not meet thee again, my child,

Where the holly berries all red and bright,
Down by the copse-wood wild?
Where the nested bird in its joy is heard,
Oh! shall I not meet thee, my child?"

"Mother, no; the young bird's song

No longer is mine to hear;

And the music stream as it rolls along
No longer will catch mine ear;

And the crimson bough of the holly now
Must blossom over my bier!"

"Thou goest to Heaven, my child, my child!
Thou goest to Heaven, my child!
And thine eye is glazed while the spring soft
Brightens the path where so oft and oft

Thy cherub-lips have smiled;

And already they weep o'er thy dreamless sleep,
My loved and my sainted child!

"But, oh! when the bosoms of all forget,

And the hearth rings again with glee,

Then, then, will mine aching lids be wet,

My gallant child, for thee!

When summer with flowers and fruits shall come,

And all are in mirth and joy;

Oh! then, in the midst of the fair earth's bloom,
I'll kiss thee, my darling boy!"

M. F. D.

THE CUISINE MAIGRE.

THERE are in the beautiful cabinet of Monsieur Schamps at Ghent two pictures by Jean Stein, one of those masters whose works show not only that he was a humorist, but a close observer of mankind.

His favourite studies were the lowest beings in the scale of existence, and his subjects generally taken from the guingette or the cabaret. His boors have a character of their own, and show in every feature the consequences of habitual debauchery and obscenity. He is no great colourist, like most of the Dutch or Flemish school, and seems to have cared little about the finish or minutia of his art. His principal aim and accomplishment being effect, and truth to nature; plain, unadulterated, disgusting, degraded nature, without caricature or exaggeration; struck off at once, and left as struck off. As a moralist he sometimes reminds us of our Hogarth; and to me one of his interiors, with their hard-outlined figures, sketches as they are, is worth more than the mellowest Ostade, or a Teniers with all its silveriness.

But to return to the pictures of which I am speaking. They are called in the catalogue, "The Cuisine gros," and "The Cuisine maigre."

It is to the latter only I mean to confine my remarks. Such was the impression it made on me, that I seem not only to have it before my eyes, but to have been present at the spot whence it was taken.

In a dilapidated grenier, with a raftered roof, is a scene such as we have only to go to Manchester, or one of our manufacturing towns to parallel. All the furniture the room contains is some wooden benches and a table. Over this table leans, at the further extremity, an emaciated tall woman, whose age it would be difficult to determine,-for misery has no age, the wretched mother of a numerous wretched offspring. She has just been attempting to suckle an infant; but, from the appearance of her breasts, which hang down like the dugs of some wild forest beast, and the face of the child, who is evidently crying for food, attempting it in vain. The husband, seated on the bench, a man of forty, in squalidness and rags, matches well with his helpmate. His countenance expresses none of the deformity of vice, or emaciation of drunkenness, usually seen in Jean Stein's pictures; but is marked by the griping hand of penury and destitution. We may trace in his fine, manly form and features that he has seen better days; that he has been reduced to what he is, by the pressure of circumstances, by the force of some overwhelming destiny, rather than by extravagance or dissipation. It is no temporary misfortune that has fallen upon him; but for years and years he has been familiar with every extreme of human ill, with cold, nakedness, hunger, and degradation.

The woman has just handed to him, in an earthen vessel, a dish of muscles; which he is sharing among the half-famished groupe that encircle him.

These faces bear a strong resemblance to his, and are, as it were,

the reflex of his own. They are faces such as I remember at Forli, and other of the Neapolitan mountain villages. Children who had never been young, dwarfish, hard-featured, capable of any crime, exhibiting a premature decrepitude, counterparts of those we sometimes see standing shivering about the purlieus of St. Giles's, or perched against some wall opposite to a gas-light in one of the crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis. Mendicancy has been long their only resource' and employment; and it appears probable that the meal they are about to partake, scanty as it is, has been purchased with the earnings of the day. No ingenuity could possibly have conceived any dish less satisfactory-less calculated to assuage hunger,-than the one before them.

The father's right hand is immersed among the muscles, and he is continuing what he has already begun, the distribution of their truly cuisine maigre.

In front stands erect a boy of perhaps thirteen, and roars at the top of his voice, which, doubtless, is shrill and piercing. It struck me that he was not to be served; perhaps as a punishment, he having brought no alms home with him, for he jealously eyes the portion that has just been distributed to his opposite brother, whose back being towards us, we cannot see him devour it. Another, with tears in his eyes, is represented stretching out his skinny hands-more like talons than hands-for his pittance, with all the eagerness of a hawk about to pounce upon its prey. A third wolfishlooking child, with long stringy hair trailing over his face, casts savage glances at his brothers, as though he were equal to any excess in order to appease the gnawings of hunger. Whilst the osseous profile of an old hag, doubtless the grandam,—a match for one of Michael Angelo's Fates,-peeps from under the arm of the mother. She is watching intently the process of distribution; but without any hope or expectation of participating in the meal.

Between the table and the chimney, are lying on the floor two children, a boy and a girl in tattered weeds, who have got between them, and are quarrelling and fighting over the pot in which the shell-fish have been boiled. One is sucking the fingers of her right hand, and dipping the other in the half turned-up vessel; as the brother, breechless,—an urchin of five or six,-brandishes high the wooden ladle, which is about to descend on the head of his sister as a reward for her imputed greediness.

To complete the scene. Over the ashes of the hearth - for there is no fire-I observed, crouching on his knees, a sixth boy, the eldest of the party, who may suggest the fate of the rest. His head is enwrapped in a handkerchief; he is evidently pining with sickness, perhaps in the last stage of consumption, and now loathes the food for which the rest are craving.

From this picture it would not be difficult to make a tale, and how true and common a tale let statesmen and politicians guess.

T. MEDWIN.

THE RECONCILIATION;

OR, THE DREAM.

A STORY FROM REAL LIFE.

BY OLD NICHOLAS.

"WILL you give me a penny, sir?" said a little ragged boy, as I passed the step of a door on which he was sitting.

There was something so unbeggarly in the tone and manner of the supplicant, that I stopped.

"Yes," said I, and I took one from my pocket.

I looked the child in the face; there was a degree of intelligence that commanded attention; an expression, too, that for a moment I fancied I had seen before.

As I put the money into his hand I asked him where he lived. "In a court over the bridge," he replied.

"With your mother?"

"Yes, sir; and father and sisters."

I beckoned him from the main street to learn more. In a few minutes I heard enough to determine me on accompanying him home. We crossed Blackfriars' Bridge, and, after winding through several courts and alleys, on the Surrey side, and close by the river, we stopped at a small hovel, which appeared fit only for the abode of wretchedness and misery.

The child pushed the door open, and we entered. In the centre of the floor, upon what appeared to be the remains of a piece of matting, sat a young woman of apparently five or six and twenty. In her arms was an infant of very tender age; two or three little ones were huddled together in a corner, whose crying my appearance partially hushed.

Their mother raised her head from the baby as I approached her. I apologised for the liberty I had taken in intruding upon her sorrows. She answered not, but burst into tears. I offered her my arm to raise her from the floor, and looked round, but in vain, for a chair or stool,-the walls were bare. She was too weak to stand. I stepped into the adjoining tenement-cottage I cannot call it,and putting down half-a-crown on the table, begged the loan of an old chair, that was the only furniture of one side of the apartment. When the poor creature was seated, I asked in what way I could best serve her.

"Oh, sir!" she replied, "food-food for my poor little ones!" I gave the little fellow who had been my conductor money, and bade him get some meat and bread. In an instant he was out of sight. I comforted as well as I was able the apparently dying woman; told her the accident that had brought me to her, and promised the little assistance that might be in my power. She would have spoken her thanks, but her strength was exhausted with the few words she had already uttered. The children, encouraged by the kind tone of voice in which I spoke, now one by one stole from their corner, and came round me. They would have been fine, healthy creatures, if misery had not "marked them for her own;" but the cheek was hollow, the eye sunken, the lip thin and livid. Hunger was fast consuming them. As I looked upon them my