irritated me to desperation, and I flung Alice's little shoe at her, just as Mr. Welby called. Susan told him all about it, and he laughed and patted my head, and said I was a brave little fellow. Alice stammered out "nasty Mr. Welby," and this seemed to amuse him mightily. Before he went he whispered to Susan, and gave her something; and it was in my mind to go straight to my father and tell him, though I had not the remotest idea why I should do so, or what the effect of it would be.

How clearly all these little incidents come back to me now! I interpret them with a bitterness which will nauseate my cup of life to the last.

How slowly and wearily the time dragged on it boots not now to say! It was varied in my life by a hard struggle to understand Mr. Birch's views of arithmetic at the day school, and by long lonely rambles in the meadows outside our old fashioned town. I had no companions except now and then such as forced themselves upon my society, and insisted upon doing battle with me occasionally. Through the mists that have long since gathered about those early years I can see myself standing before some giant of a youth (who would fight me, whether or no), and receiving my punishment like a man. There were times when I came off conqueror, and then: I remember I almost felt sorry that my adversary was beaten ; for I had a peculiarly soft heart in those days, despite the adamantine character of the district generally.

It was not a desirable place to be brought up in, Elmsfield. The boys were bullies and the men were brutes. At least, that was my boyish experience. The girls were fit companions for the boys; and the women,-well, I did not know very much about the women, thank goodness. And even now I may do the Elmsfielders an injustice generally. If I do, they will forgive me on account of my juvenile prejudices; for as a man I know them not. They never understood me, no more than they understood anyone else who was born with sensibilities. They made game of my long black hair and my clean white stockings (my mother was proud of her son), and they objected to my going about alone, and having pet corners by the brook, and finding out the best places for violets and primroses. And, I fear me, my father did not understand me, though he always treated me kindly; and I loved him more than ever because he was so good to Alice-little toddling Alice, with her merry blue eyes and her rosy dimpled cheeks.

Oh! if my father could only have given up going to that hotel; and if he had not been so angry when my mother upbraided him;

and if my mother had been more persuasive in her manner and less fierce in her condemnation, perhaps our household would have been a happy one; and I might not have had this story to tell.

Alice was five years old, and I was eleven, when the first really great trouble of my life came upon me. The misunderstanding between our parents increased to such an extent that hardly a day passed without what Susan used to call a regular row; and a new element of bitterness was the introduction of Mr. Welby's name into the family disputes. Even to a boy of my years it was pretty clear that this kind of perpetual warfare must have some violent ending. Impressed with Sunday school and other advice, I religiously prayed for peace, but peace came not; and when sometimes I went out, which was very seldom, to a neighbour's house where there were no "regular rows," and the children were happy and not afraid, the home to which I returned seem to chill all my better feelings and fill my heart with a blank despair, until little Alice trotted up to me, and pulled my hand, and climbed upon my knee, and buried her dear little face in my neck.

At length the end came. One day my mother was specially kind to Susan and myself. There was a circus in the town, and she gave permission for Susan to take me to see the riders. When we were ready to go she took me in her arms and kissed me-kissed me so tenderly, so fondly, that it seemed as if an angel had come down specially from heaven with an answer to my prayers. There were tears in her eyes, too, when we left her, and the expression of her face seemed to steal into my heart and make it ache; but this soon passed away in the joy of her fervent kiss, and the new sensation of being sent out to be amused and made happy.

In latter days I have been to see the riders, that my memory of dishonour and my title to vengeance might not expire. I have been there to take my turn, as it were, upon the wheel-to be broken on the wheel of my own memory, to suffer and grow strong.

You have sat, no doubt, my friend, and seen the clown tumble, and you have laughed with the little ones as I laughed in my early days; but now, if I were to see that scene again, as I may do, memory would fill my ears with mingled sounds of sobs and laughter.

Oh, that night years ago! Whilst I was clapping my hands together with childish glee at the tricks of Mr. Merryman, Fate was preparing for me such a future as few could have lived through and retained their reason. Don't look at me as though I had not achieved that triumph. They think me mad, I dare say; but I am as sane as

you are, quite as sane; and you shall have ample proof of that, one day. Better go on with my story? You are right; I will.

When we reached home the house was in disorder, the fires had gone out, the candles were not lighted, and all the place was still as death. I remember taking hold upon Susan's gown and asking her what was the matter. She made no reply; but lighted the candles, went to my mother's room, which was strewn with papers and opened drawers. There was a letter on her dressing-table for my father. I learnt this afterwards.

"She is gone away."

Little Alice was fast asleep in her cot in the next room. "Mamma,-where is mamma ?" I cried. "Don't make a noise," said Susan. Whilst her son was enjoying the quips and cranks of the clown, and falling into a passion of juvenile love for the young lady who sprang through paper hoops and leaped over yards of blue silk; whilst little Alice was asleep and dreaming of angels, perhaps, and that wonderland which I tried sometimes to make her comprehend in my simple reading of our fairy books; whilst my father was smoking his pipe and thinking out that great invention of his, which should make his family rich; whilst the moon was calmly shining upon Elmsfield, my mother was deserting her home, her husband, and her children for ever,-deserting all, perjuring her soul, blackening the innocent names of her children, for a villain.

The whole town rang with the news next day. Mrs. Newbolde had eloped with Mr. Welby.

It was a pitiable sight to see my father, who had alternate fits of rage and sorrow, of weeping and cursing, of sad sobriety and wild drunkenness, which lasted for many days. In the intervals I carried little Alice to that walk by the river, and we sat and looked into the murmuring waters, and listened to the song of the factory. Despite all our troubles and strange griefs, which we hardly understood, the river flowed on as before, the wheels flashed in the factory windows, the birds sang, the sun shone, and the world was not altered in the least, except when we were at home, and here the change was great; not that we had enjoyed any very great happiness there, only that we remembered days of calm and quiet, and some happy times when father was at home and mother pleasant and talkative; we remembered a few sunny hours when the whole household turned out into the fields to gather buttercups and daisies; we remembered a few warm, loving, tender caresses; but after that night at the circus a dull, heavy, indescribable gloom settled upon our house, culminating a few weeks afterwards in a terrible catastrophe.

Susan was sure something was going to happen. There had been funerals in the candle, death-ticks in the cupboard, a dog had howled all night for a week; and with these and other signs of death the woman had frightened me into a condition quite ready to receive the horrible news which was brought to us one morning after my father had been out all night.

"Mr. Newbolde's found drownded in the river," said the blunt messenger, "and they've took him to a public house to hold an inquest on him."

He had fallen into the river whilst on his way home from the factory, they said, and the verdict was accidental death. I never saw him. It was thought best that I should not, and my brightest memory of him is therefore but little disturbed. I only think of the active, noble-browed, strong-limbed gentleman who carried me on his shoulders up the factory stairs into that little room where he planned and drew those wonderful designs for the net-makers. But my memory instantly wanders to an old church, in which I sit a mourner in a great black pew, looking up at our Saviour rising from the dead, and wondering if God is really good and kind and merciful.

Oh, what a terrible life mine has been! what an awful life it is! I am the wandering Jew, the outcast, the vagrant, the gin drinker, the vagabond, the madman if you will, with a terrible mission. I am waiting until I meet Welby, or some one dear to him,-not her, not her! When he crosses my path, as cross it he must, there will be a fearful retribution. The day is coming-sooner than he thinks, much sooner.

But I wander. Our house and all the furniture was sold, and some neighbours took Alice to mind and sent me to work-to work in that same factory where he had worked, and for years I crossed that bridge daily, and for years saw my poor father lying in the water. I could not shut out the picture; it would come up in the rippling river, in sunshine and in shadow, in calm and in storm, at morning, noon, and night. I know now why it was sent to me, that my vengeance should not slumber.

One day little Alice was taken ill, and at night she died with her head on my shoulder. She would let no one else touch her. "Where is mamma?" she said. "Fetch mamma, Georgy." Even with the tears in my eyes, I felt my soul swelling with wild ungovernable rage against Welby, and I vowed over that poor little dead body to take vengeance on him.

From this time there are strange blanks in my life, the years come and go in my memory like glimpses of light on a stormy day. I do

not seem to remember them well, all my mind is fixed upon that past time. I seem to see myself, as if I were looking into a glass, wandering about the world, toiling, working, labouring and waiting for a coming day. I used to search and hunt for that man, trusting to my vengeance as a divining rod; but I do so no longer. Fate will bring him here to me in London. All the world meets again in London; we shall meet; he and I will meet. Oh, never fear my friend, the reckoning will come. He is old, and may be dead, you say? No, that is not so. She may have gone, she, poor misguided, unhappy soul, and Heaven forgive her! but he is alive, and his hair is grey, and his face is thin, with lines of care in it. I have seen him in dreams, and I know where I shall meet him again for the last time. On that bridge at midnight, crouching and stealing by, creeping in the shadow because he fears a ghost, slinking away from me who am the image of my dead father, his injured friend. I see him now; there he goes, crouching, bending, quivering, clinging to the wall, dodging the extended arm, and the glaring eyes of the avenger whom he takes for the drowned man's spirit.

Stand aside, I say he is coming. I am the Divine instrument of vengeance, it is entrusted to me to slay that human serpent and fling it out into the dark waters. Stand aside, I say I am dangerous

-I am Death.

"You are

"No, no," said the keeper, seizing him by the arm. George Newbolde; be quiet, there's a good fellow, here are your flowers."

Weak and exhausted, the madman threw himself into the keeper's arms, clutched a handful of wild flowers (which, I was told, always pacified him), and I slipped away with his terrible story in my heart, and too sad for tears.