young men who have the means and the leisure should go through the formula known as 'seeing life'

-a process which to some is a sad tragedy, and which to nearly all is a bitter experience. Very few come out of that fire unscathed. Charley had gone through this formulafortunately for him in a superficial way. Charley's parents were good people enough, and had tacitly agreed that their son must 'see life' before he settled; everybody's sons saw life before settling, and Charley must not be an exception. So the young fellow went into the world, and in the natural course of things became mixed up in matters, the mere mention of which would have brought a blush to his mother's cheek. But Charley was doing the proper thing; there was no doubt of that. However, the young fellow's inclinations were not inherently vicious, and he escaped the pitfalls in which so many weak and unfortunate ones are ingulfed. He and Felix had met some few times since Felix's installation as London correspondent to the Penny Whistle, and they had opened their hearts to each other. Thus it came out that Charley told Felix of his introduction to the racing world, and of his adventures therein.

'You see, Felix,' he said, 'I had outrun my allowance, and I thought I might be able to set things straight, and pay my few small debts, without coming on my father's purse. So, led away by the flaming accounts in the newspapers, I went into betting; was introduced by a friend to a club where I could bet, and for three months went regularly to races. It didn't turn out well, and after dropping nearly two hundred pounds, I went to my father, and made a clean breast of it. He paid my debts, and made me promise to give up the infatuation, as he called it. I promised willingly enough, for I

had made up my mind before, and I am sure I shall never be drawn into the net again. The fact is, Felix, it didn't suit me; the men I met on the racecourses were such cads and blackguards that I soon became disgusted with myself for mixing with them. I tell you what it is, old fellow. I think being with you a great deal has done me good, and I have learnt from you to hate things that are mean. You've been to races, of course?'

The

I

'I've been to Goodwood, and Ascot, and to the Derby. Derby is a wonderful sight. should like to go with you to one or two of the small meetings.'

They went in company, and Felix, having a deeper purpose in his mind than idle amusement, saw much to astonish him. As they were making their way through a crowd of sharps and gulls, Charley pulled his sleeve, and said,

"There! There's a man who had over a hundred pounds of my money.'

Turning, Felix saw Mr. David Sheldrake, evidently very much at home. Felix, not wishing to be seen by Mr. Sheldrake, walked away, and watched him from a distance.

lix.

'Is he a betting-man?' asked Fe

'O, yes; and as sharp as a needle.'

'Does he attend these meetings regularly?'

'You seem to be interested in him, Felix.'

'Yes, I know him.'

'And don't like him, evidently,' observed Charley, judging from his friend's tone.

'That is true; I don't like him. But you haven't answered my question.'

'I have met him on nearly every racecourse I have been to; he is always to be seen in the "ring,” I should say.'

Felix did not pursue the subject, but later in the day said,

'Have you any documents, Charley, connected with your betting experiences, or have you destroyed

them ?'

I have them all. By the bye, they might be useful to you; there are some strange things among them-well, perhaps, not strange in themselves, but strange that such things should be allowed. It would be a good subject for you to take up.'

'Any letters from that man?' 'O, yes; suppose I send you the packet?'

'I should like to see them.'

They were received in due course by Felix, and they so interested him that he began from that time to subscribe to the sporting papers, and to make a regular study of the usually unprofitable theme. Any person who did not know Felix's character might reasonably have supposed that he had been bitten by the mania, and that he was beginning to entertain the idea that he might make a fortune by betting with sharps. They would have had ample grounds for so supposing, if they had known that Felix actually sent small sums in stamps to the prophets and tipsters and the layers of odds who advertised in the sport ing papers, for the purpose of obtaining the information necessary for the rapid and certain realisation of 'fabulous sums'-a phrase which many of the advertisers used in the traps they set, unconscious of the ironical truth it contained. But what Felix was doing was a means to another end, and he lost his money cheerfully. He began to frequent racecourses also, and on one occasion, early in his experience, he saw Lily's brother, as he expected to see him, running hither and thither in a state of blind excitement. With a set determination, Felix watched the young man

during the whole of the day; saw the fatal infatuation which urged him onwards; and saw him pass through the various stages of hope, suspense, and agony. Felix saw more, with the eyes of his mind; he saw ruin waiting at Alfred's heels. Felix had met with an old legend which stated how every human being was attended by two angels, one bad, one good, and how they strove for mastery over the soul they attended. As the recollection of this legend came to him, Felix looked up and saw Alfred's bad angel, Mr. David Sheldrake, talking to Alfred, and Alfred eagerly listening. It saddened Felix to see this, although he fully expected it, and was prepared for it. 'Alfred's good angel,' he thought, 'is love. But love has no sword to strike this false friend dead.' But Felix went home that evening with a clue in his hand.

On this night, as Felix walked away from Lily's house, he thought of these things, and was too disturbed to go home. He walked about the quiet streets, and at the end of an hour found himself on the Thames Embankment. As he stood there, musing, gazing into the solemn river, he became conscious of a sudden tremor in the air. He looked around with a feeling of vague alarm upon him; but he saw nothing, heard nothing. 'Psha!' he muttered. Mr. Podmore's presentiment is frightening me with shadows. I'll stroll past Lily's house, and then go home to bed.'

CHAPTER XXXVII.

JIM PODMORE HAS A DREAM, AND WAKES UP IN TIME.

JIM PODMORE, staggering into the one room which formed his Englishman's castle, found his wife and Pollypod fast asleep in bed.

Before he went out to his work in the morning, he had told his wife not to sit up for him that night. 'You've had precious hard work of it, old woman,' he had said, 'this last week; so go to bed early and have a long night's rest. I'll find my way upstairs all right.' The precious hard work which Jim Podmore referred to was one of those tasks which poor people — especially women take upon themselves when occasion requires, with a readiness and cheerfulness which it is beautiful to see. A neighbour's child had been ill, and required constant watching. The mother, worn out with her labour of love, had fallen ill herself, and Mrs. Podmore flew to her aid, and attended to her household duties, and nursed her and the child through their sickness. The cheerfulness with which Mrs. Podmore undertook this task and performed it, as if it were a duty incumbent upon her, cannot be described. The best reward she could receive was hers: the mother and child recovered their health, and were strong enough to attend to themselves. Late in the previous night, the doctor had released Mrs. Podmore, and had told her-with smiles and good words and with a hand-shake which gratified the simple woman mightily-that now she had best go home and take care of herself; for we can get about ourselves now,' he said, and sha'n't want you any more.' This accounted for Jim Podmore having to find his way upstairs by himself, for Mrs. Podmore seldom went to bed before he returned home. He knew, on this night, that his wife was asleep, and in the midst of his drowsiness he took off his boots in the passage, so that he should not disturb her.

Entering the room in his stockinged feet, he stepped softly to the bedside, and rested his hand lightly and tenderly on Pollypod's neck.

The bed being against the wall, and Pollypod sleeping inside, he could not kiss her without disturbing his wife. The child slept peacefully, and Jim Podmore gazed lovingly at the pretty picture, and leaned forward to feel the sweet breath, pure as an angel's whisper, that came from her parted lips. His supper was laid for him on the table, and he sat down to it, Snap standing at his feet in patient eagerness waiting for such scraps and morsels as he thought fit to give. Jim did not forget his dog; Snap fared well, and when supper was finished the dog stretched himself on the ground, and with half-closed eyes watched his master's face. Snap blinked and blinked, but although occasionally his eyes were so nearly closed that only the thinnest line of light could be seen, the dog never relaxed his watchful gaze. Jim sat in his chair, pipe in mouth, and smoked and dozed, and thought of Dick Hart and his wife and children, and of his own wife and Pollypod, till they all became mixed up together in the strangest way, and in the phantasmagoria of his fancy changed places and merged one into the other in utter defiance of all probability. Thus, as he leaned forward to catch the sweet breath that came from Pollypod's lips, the child's face became blurred and indistinct, and in her place Dick Hart appeared, crouching upon the railway platform in an agony of despair. The platform itself appeared, with its throng of anxious faces, with its sound of hurried feet and cries of pain, with a light in the air that belonged to neither night nor day, sensitive with a tremor which was felt, but could not be seen or described, and which spoke of hopes for ever crushed out, and of lives of fair promise blighted by the act that lay in one fatal moment's neglect or helplessness. If

I don't go to bed,' murmured Jim, with a start, whereat all these figures vanished into nothingness, I shall fall asleep.' And still he sat, and murmured, 'Poor Dick!'

It was really but the work of a moment. Jim Podmore being on duty, suddenly felt a shock-then heard a crash, followed by screams and shouts, and what seemed to be the muffled sound of a myriad voices. He knew that an accident had occurred, and he ran forward, and saw carriages overturned on the line, and huge splinters of wood lying about. 'Who did it?' he

cried. 'Dick Hart' a voice replied; and then he heard Dick's voice crying, 'O, my God!' The busy hands were at work clearing the wreck, and the few passengers -happily there were but few-were assisted out. Most of them had escaped with a bruise or a scratch, but one man, they said, looked in a bad state, and at his own entreaty they allowed him to lie still on the platform until doctors, who had been promptly sent for, had arrived; and one little child was taken into a room, and lay like dead. Jim Podmore was in the room, and he saw Dick Hart brought in between two men. Dick, when his eyes lighted on the piteous sight of the little girl lying like that, trembled as if ague had seized him, and began to sob and cry. I did it! I did it!' he gasped. 'Why don't some one strike me down dead!' As he uttered these words, and as he stood there, with a face whiter than the face of the child who lay before him, a woman rushed in and cried in a wild tone, 'Where's the man that killed my child?' Upon this, with a cry wilder than that to which the poor woman had given vent, Dick Hart wrested himself free from the men, whose hands (in their grief at what had occurred) were only lightly laid upon him,

and rushed out of the room like a madman. The men followed him, but he was too quick for them, and before they could lay hands on him again, he had jumped from the platform on to the line, dashing aside the persons who tried to stop him. His mad idea was to run forward on the line until he saw a train coming, and then to throw himself before it and be crushed to pieces. But he was saved from the execution of this piteous design; the men reached him and seized him, and carried him back by main force. When he was in the room again, his passion being spent, he fell upon his knees, and looked round with a scared white face, waiting for what was to come. 'Poor Dick!' murmured Jim Podmore. And then the men whispered to each other how that Dick Hart had been worked off his legs lately; how the accident was nothing more than was to be expected; and how Dick's wife was near her confinement with her second. 'Poor Dick!' murmured Jim Podmore again, for the thought of Dick Hart's one little girl at home, and the other child that was soon expected, brought Pollypod to his mind.

It was quite true; Dick Hart's wife was very near her confinement, and on this very night, unconscious of the dreadful event that had taken place, she was busy getting together the little things she had made for her first-born, and recalling the feelings she had experienced before she became a mother

feelings in which joy and fear were so commingled as to be inseparable. The time was night, in the wane of summer, and many a smile came upon the woman's lips, and many a tender thought dwelt in her mind, as she laid out the little garments and examined them to see where they wanted a stitch. Mrs. Hart had been married five

years, and while she was employed in the manner just described, her first child, four years of age, was sitting in a low chair, playing with a doll, which not only had soften ing of the brain, but softening of every portion of its anatomy-for it was a rag doll.

But the doll, treasure as it was, notwithstanding its flat face (for rags do not admit of the formation of features of particular shape and beauty) was not the only object of the child's attention. She had that day been invested with a pair of new red socks, and Little Vanity was now holding out her little leg as straight as she could, and calling her mother's attention for the hundredth time to her flaming red treasures. Mrs. Hart knelt before the child, and admired the socks with the most outrageouslyexaggerated turns of speech, and pulled them up tight, to her child's infinite delight and contentment. Then the mother began to prattle upon the subject nearest to her heart, and began to speak also, for the hundredth time, about the little brother-for Mrs. Hart had settled that her second,' as Jim Podmore had expressed it, was to be a boy whom Rosy presently would have to play with.

'And you'll love him very much, Rosy, won't you?' asked the mother.

'Yes, very, very much.'

Indeed, Rosy used a great many more 'verys' than two, and quite ingenuously, be it stated. But Rosy had a strong desire to be enlightened upon a certain point, and she seized the present favourable opportunity. She had heard a great deal about this little brother whom she was to love and play with, but she was puzzled to know where the little stranger was to come from. Now was the time to obtain the information.

little girl, 'when will Bunny

come ?'

'Bunny,' it must be explained, was the fanciful title by which Rosy had already christened the expected stranger.

'Next week, Rosy,' answered the happy mother; almost sure next week. Ain't you glad?"

'Yes, I'm very, very glad.' (Again a redundancy of 'verys' which must be left to the imagination.) 'But, mother, who'll bring Bunny here?'

'Who'll bring him, Rosy? Why, the doctor, to be sure.'

Rosy nodded her head wisely, and employed a full minute in the silent enjoyment of her new red socks. Mrs. Hart was silent also, worshipping her little girl. If children only knew how their mothers worship them! Down went Rosy's leg again.

Where will the doctor bring Bunny from, mother?'

'From the parsley-bed,' replied the mother, laughing.

'Is Bunny there now, mother?' 'Yes, dear.'

'Did I come out of a parsley-bed, mother?'

'Yes, my dear,' and Mrs. Hart smothered Rosy's face and neck with kisses. She was so occupied with her happiness that she did not hear the door open, and did not know that any one was in the room until she heard a voice calling her name. The voice belonged to a neighbour, Mrs. Thomson, and Mrs. Hart rose to her feet, and was beginning to tell merrily of the conversation which she had just had with Rosy, when something in Mrs. Thomson's face stopped her tongue.

'What's the matter, Mrs. Thomson? What is it? Tell me, quick!