but for her the tutor would not have been there. Then 'Sink you! I wish he had flogged you all!' she shrieked, and, turning stiffly, she went mumbling and cursing down the stairs, the lace lappets of her head trembling, and her gold-headed cane now thumping the floor, now waving uncertainly in the air.

A quarter of an hour earlier, in the apartments for which Mr. Fishwick was bound when her ladyship intercepted him, two men stood talking at a window. The room was the best in the Castle Inn-a lofty panelled chamber with a southern aspect looking upon the smooth sward and sweet-briar hedges of Lady Hertford's terrace, and commanding beyond these a distant view of the wooded slopes of Savernake. The men spoke in subdued tones, and more than once looked towards the door of an adjacent room, as if they feared to disturb some one.

'My dear Sir George,' the elder said, after he had listened patiently to a lengthy relation, in the course of which he took snuff a dozen times, 'your mind is quite made up, I suppose?'

'Absolutely.'

'Well, it is a remarkable series of events; a-most remarkable series,' Dr. Addington answered with professional gravity. 'And certainly, if the lady is all you paint her—-and she seems to set you young bloods on fire-no ending could well be more satisfactory. With the addition of a comfortable place in the Stamps or the Pipe Office, if we can take his lordship the right way-it should do. It should do handsomely. But,' with a keen glance at his companion, even without that-you know that he is still far from well?'

6

"

6

I know that all the world is of one of two opinions,' Sir George answered, smiling. The first, that his lordship ails nothing save politically; the other, that he is at death's door and will not have it known.'

The physician shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. 'Neither is true,' he said. The simple fact is, he has the gout; and the gout is an odd thing, Sir George, as you'll know one of these days,' with another sharp glance at his companion. It flies here and there and everywhere.'

And where is it now?' Soane asked innocently.

It has gone to his head,' Addington answered, in a tone so studiously jejune that Sir George glanced at him. The doctor, however, appeared unaware of the look, and merely continued: So,

if he does not take things quite as you wish, Sir George, you'llbut here his lordship comes !'

The doctor thought that he had sufficiently prepared Soane for a change in his patron's appearance. Nevertheless, the younger man was greatly shocked when through the door, obsequiously opened-and held open while a man might count fifty, so that eye and mind grew expectant—the great statesman, the People's Minister, at length appeared. For the stooping figure that moved to a chair only by virtue of a servant's arm, and seemed the taller for its feebleness, for dragging legs and shrunken frame and features sharpened by illness and darkened by the great peruke it was the Earl's fashion to wear, he was in a degree

a prepared. But for the languid expression of the face that had been so eloquent, for the lack-lustre eyes, and the dulness of mind that noticed little and heeded less, he was not prepared; and these were so marked and so unlike the great Minister

A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high

-so unlike the man whose eagle gaze had fluttered Courts and imposed the law on Senates, that it was only the presence of Lady Chatham, who followed her lord, a book and cushion in her hands, that repressed the exclamation which rose to Sir George's lips. So complete was the change indeed that, as far as the Earl was concerned, he might have uttered it! His lordship, led to the head of the table, sank without a word into the chair placed for him, and, propping his elbow on the table and his head on his hand, groaned aloud.

Lady Chatham compressed her lips with evident annoyance as she took her stand behind her husband's chair; it was plain from the glance she cast at Soane that she resented the presence of a witness. Even Dr. Addington, with his professional sang-froid and his knowledge of the invalid's actual state, was put out of countenance for a moment. Then he signed to Sir George to be silent, and to the servant to withdraw.

At last Lord Chatham spoke. "This business?' he said in a hollow voice and without uncovering his eyes, is it to be settled now?'

If your lordship pleases,' the doctor answered in a subdued tone.

Sir George Soane is there ?'

6

'Yes.'

'Sir George,' the Earl said with an evident effort, 'I am sorry I cannot receive you better.'

'My lord, as it is I am deeply indebted to your kindness.'

"

'Dagge finds no flaw in their case,' Lord Chatham continued apathetically. Her ladyship has read his report to me. If Sir George likes to contest the claim, it is his right.'

I do not propose to do so.'

Sir George had not this time subdued his voice to the doctor's pitch; and the Earl, whose nerves seemed alive to the slightest sound, winced visibly. That is your affair,' he answered querulously. At any rate the trustees do not propose to do so.'

"

Sir George, speaking with more caution, replied that he acquiesced; and then for a few seconds there was silence in the room, his lordship continuing to sit in the same attitude of profound melancholy, and the others to look at him with compassion, which they vainly strove to dissemble. At last, in a voice little above a whisper, the Earl asked if the man was there.

'He waits your lordship's pleasure,' Dr. Addington answered. 'But before he is admitted,' the physician continued diffidently and with a manifest effort, may I say a word, my lord, as to the position in which this places Sir George Soane?'

6

'I was told this morning,' Lord Chatham answered, in the same muffled tone, that a match had been arranged between the parties, and that things would remain as they were. It seemed to me, sir, a prudent arrangement.'

(

Sir George was about to answer, but Dr. Addington made a sign to him to be silent. That is so,' the physician replied smoothly. But your lordship is versed in Sir George Soane's affairs, and knows that he must now go to his wife almost emptyhanded. In these circumstances it has occurred rather to his friends than to himself, and indeed I speak against his will and by sufferance only, that-that, in a word, my lord ——'

Lord Chatham lowered his hand as Dr. Addington paused. A faint flush darkened his lean aquiline features, set a moment before in the mould of hopeless depression. What?' he said. And he raised himself sharply in his chair. What has occurred to his friends?"

6

6

had been more dreaded by the Rigbys and Dodingtons of his party than the most scathing rebuke from the lips of another, he fixed the unlucky doctor, where he stood. Is that your proposal, sir ?

'' he repeated.

The physician saw too late that he had ventured farther than his interest would support him; and he quailed. On the other hand, it is possible he had been neither so confident before, nor was so entirely crushed now, as appeared. Well, my lord, it did occur to me,' he stammered, 'as not inconsistent with the public welfare,

"The public welfare!' the Minister cried in biting accents. * The public plunder, sir, you mean! It were not inconsistent with that to quarter on the nation as many ruined gentlemen as you please! But you mistake if you bring the business to me to doyou mistake. I have dispensed thirteen millions of His Majesty's money in a year, and would have spent as much again and as much to that, had the affairs of this nation required it; but the gentleman is wrong if he thinks it has gone to my friends. My bands are clean,'his lordship continued with an expressive gesture. 'I have said, in another place, none of it sticks to them. Virtute me involvo !' And then, in a lower tone, but still with a note of austerity in his voice, ‘I rejoice to think,' he continued, that the gentleman was not himself the author of this application. I rejoice to think that it did not come from him. These things have been done freely ; it concerns me not to deny it; but since I had to do with His Majesty's exchequer, less freely. And that only concerns me!'

Sir George Soane bit his lip. He felt keenly the humiliation of his position. But it was so evident that the Earl was not himself—so evident that the tirade to which he had just listened was one of those outbursts, noble in sentiment, but verging on the impracticable and the ostentatious, in which Lord Chatham was prone to indulge in his weaker moments, that he felt little inclination to resent it. Yet to let it pass unnoticed was impossible.

My lord,' he said firmly, but with respect, it is permitted to all to make an application which the custom of the time has sanctioned. That is the extent of my action—at the highest. The propriety of granting such requests is another matter and rests with your lordship. I have nothing to do with that.'

The Earl appeared to be as easily disarmed as he had been

corpse and see if it offered any suggestions for the inscription. Then I returned home and went to work. It ran somehow like this :

""IN LOVING MEMORY OF

JONAS D. SMOUT,

ONCE OF K STREET,

I came

)

NOW NO MORE.
He has gone at last where the good niggers go.
He will be the whitest man there,

Requicscat in pace."
For three days without a pause I sat there chiselling that
stone, and wondering whether McKinley would leave me bed and
table linen at the White House when he went out or no.
to the last line, REQUIES-CAT—why, darn my socks ! I thought,
where is that blamed cat ? Well, as I was gilding the full stop
at the end there comes a fire-engine tearing past. I never could
resist a fire, and I followed round in high spirits. That stone was
the biggest job I ever done, and I felt sure I was a made man
now.

I sang as I went down the street-I was that chirpy, with affluence staring me right in the face at last. When I come to K Street, where the fire was, all the crowd was gazing at an upper storey window-sill—and blamed if there warn’t my cat crying aloud with the fear of death and the tip of her tail singed off. Up those stairs and through that fire I went, and me and that cat was chased off the window-sill by the flames, and caught in a blanket in the street beneath. There's a bit of luck for

you a! But Jonas D. Smout the deceased, it was his house, and he was burnt. I'd have saved him too if I could, but I hadn't leisure.

'It seems my cat that I left behind when I came from viewing the late Smout got worrying around with a corpse-candle and set the place on fire. Now that the departed had got cremated that way, the widow allowed she had no more use for that tombstone, guessed she wouldn't know where to put it. It's no use crying over squashed yams. I hadn't the capital for a law-suit; so I just took that stone round and left it at the widow's lodgings, hoping it might come in for one of the boys, and started about to find another trade. But just think of my luck! Any other man, and that cat would have been burnt alive as sure as fate.

• After that I got the post of fetch-and-carrier in a general store, and with my usual good fortune got promoted in time to a