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THE SHADOW OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S.

whatever it might be, were Jem's resolves, taken and executed in about two seconds; the third instant found him round the corner, and striding off he knew not whither, through lanes and streets, and under the shadow of high towering warehouses, away from Matt and shame, from Matt and punishment.

CHAPTER IV.

"I have not one single farthing in the world;" such was the uppermost thought in Jemmy's mind. "I will never steal it;" this was the next. What was the third? What must it have been? for, an hour later, we find him again minus a coat which he had worn only a fortnight, and plus five shillings and threepence in his trousers pocket, and a very substantial roll of bread and wedge of cheese in his hands.

Behold James Neville, jun., of Easton, sitting on a barrel in the yard of a brewery, without a coat, with five and threepence as his capital, and the world before him.

I do not pretend to reveal his thoughts. It would take some labour to unravel them, and a very ready pen to write them down. But all he could think of amounted in the end to this. He had gained the "freedom" he had longed for, as far as the removal of all restraint could set him free, and yet he felt he was as helpless as a slave. The tyrant, hunger, stood but a few days' march before him, and would infallibly approach him with rapid strides. "The big world" which he had idolized was not big enough to give him employment that minute, and too big to take the slightest notice of him, as he sat on a beer-barrel and wondered what he should do next.

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My mother, my sisters." I think his lips formed once or twice those tender words-names to which desolation was just beginning to lend a fresh tenderness. "My mother. She is crying for me now; my sisters are heart-broken, perhaps. All Easton is in a fuss. Where am I? They don't know, and I know almost as little myself. Do I wish myself back? No, it would be the old drudgery."

Matt's poison had sunk too deep into Jem. He had shared his companion's life just long enough to have his sensibility dulled, his sense of right and wrong tampered with, and God's precious gift of conscience more than insulted. Alas! a thought less fearfully resolute than that-"Evil, be thou my good"-which Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel, but amounting very nearly to that, arose in Jem's mind.

It is marvellous how soon, under the pressure of what seems necessity, our feelings of duty fly away, and what seemed a sin an hour before, now seems almost right, if we can on any plea justify it as necessary. Before half-an-hour's musing

on the barrel was over, it seemed to Jem that he must "go through with it." "When I see the world I'll be off to Easton again, and who will be the worse. Now I should go back like a sneak, with my tail between my legs. They will be glad enough to get a sight of me this day twelve months; but what would they do with me now?” This thought nerved him up. A recklessness of the future gave him a sort of delirious power in the present. He stood up, saying to himself, "Lon

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don seems so hot this Summer weather, that a coat is only a doubtful advantage."

So Jem leaped up and shook himself, and shook off in the action three very important and useful appendages of a man's complex nature-namely, his conscience, his self-respect, and his hat. The fall of the latter on the pavement reminded him that he must cut a very strange figure indeed; for he felt that to walk about in a good straw hat, with blue ribbons, and bare shirt sleeves, is at least an unusual costume.

"I say, my man," he said, addressing a labourer with a black cloth cap and brass buttons, who was sauntering into the yard, "here's a fair 'swop.' I'll give you that hat for your cap and sixpence."

"Cute young shaver," thought the other, "perhaps the sixpence had better go the other way." And then he replied straight out, "I haint the man to deny a neighbour a hadvantage, so 'ere's rather a neat vest for your'n and two bob."

"I don't want to take anything but the cap. Here, take the hat and give us that old cap. You get the best of the bargain," said Jem.

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'Now, I'd just like to know this," answered the man. "Who are you? What brought you 'ere? Are you hon to stand treat? If so, I'm your man. Do step hover the way to the Hoyster in 'Arness' and treat me to a pot, and you shall have another-if you can pay for it."

The die was cast; Jem tasted the liquor, poor miserable stuff as it was. It was the first step on that path which leads to ruin. Jem was not seventeen, but before three p.m. that July day he had poured down his throat more than he had ever tasted in a twelvemonth at home, and reeling out of the tavern he found he had neither hat to his head, waistcoat to his back, nor one penny in his pocket; the fact of the matter being that the neighbourly owner of the cap had sent him adrift just at the moment when the score equalled the sum which he had abstracted from the pocket of the muddled boy.

And Jem reeled into the street, wandered on, on, on, till it grew darker and darker, and finally with a headache that nearly drove him mad, and limbs which refused any longer to support him, sank down under an archway, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER V.

You must go back now to the opening scene of my story. It is two o'clock in the morning of the seventh of August. The city is wrapped in stillness. All the busy traffic of the day is whirled away. Warehouses are locked up from the outside. Quills and ink are lying about ten thousand desks; and the great genius of "Co." which by day is omnipresent in the city of London is nowhere to be seen. The men who make up firms and parterships are now sleeping in their West End mansions or their Southwark houses. The Sunday which is beginning now will give time for a double coating of dust to gather on everything within doors and without; but beyond that there will be little to mark its occurrence in the city; though the churches are innumerable, worshippers are few. The great fire of London was very lavish in its consumption of Church-oak; but it stopped just at the northern wall of

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THE SHADOW OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S.

Sepulchre's Church, by Pie-corner, and left the old, half-Gothic, half-Perpendicular structure standing as one of its landmarks.

Here to the right stands St. Sepulchre's, and so near does Newgate frown, that the condemned felon in those black cells can hear the grating of the sexton's rope against the stones between each shock of the heavy knell that calls gaping hundreds to his execution.

St. Sepulchre's is a church of grim associations. Its name, to begin with, has as dreary a sound as any other name I am acquainted with. It is a church full of old memories of hangings at Tyburne for theft and libel; a melancholy church, whose sad fate it has been, for many a score of years, to hear the groans of the fettered victims of unjust laws. Nay, more, some of those graves there that look so like all other graves, entomb murderers, thieves, and pickpockets. Long ago the people of the neighbourhood were too choice to let the dust of murderers and felons mingle with their own innocent ashes'; and we read that in 1585, the body of a certain John Awfield was refused a last resting place here, although his capital crime had been one of which, in these days, the law scarcely takes cognizance; he was arraigned for " sparcinge abroad certain lewd, sedicious, and trayterous bookes," and suffered for it by his neck.

In later years, old St. Sepulchre's got over its scruples, and was even liberal enough to grant tombs to murderers; and here is Sarah Malcome's grave, who was executed for cold-blooded murder in 1773.

Strange are the connections between Newgate and this church of the middle ages. For many a long year successive sextons have condoled (for one pound six and eightpence a time), with the poor felons as they drove to death, and have tolled the big bell in their grief. For many a year the bellman of the place used to pace beneath Newgate walls, and make Skinner Street and Snowhill echo with his chant

"All you that in condemned cell do lie,
Prepare ye, for to-morrow ye must die;
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near,
When ye before the Almighty shall appear.
Examine well yourselves, in time repent,
That ye may not t' eternal flames be sent;
And when Saint Sepulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Past twelve o'clock !"

This good office of the bellman was completed next morning by the same functionary. When the cart passed the portal of the church he bade it stop, and tolling his bell, desired the people to join with him in praying for the culprits' souls, an office which the beadle of the Merchant Tailor's Hall (at a handsome salary), saw that he well fulfilled.*

The last pious and useful office which St. Sepulchre's did for the poor prisoner, was to hand him a choice nosegay for his button hole, to cheer the way to Tyburne. Sixteen-stringed Jack, the murderer of Dr. Bell, in Gunnersbury Lane, was the last culprit who bore this adornment to his execution.

I suppose the old church deemed that it did its anty to its neighbour Newgate, and the wretches there, by these enactments, but I cannot help feeling thankful that a chaplin's earnest words

Munday's Stowe. Edn. of 1619, p. 25.

and pious counsels, should now take the place of the bellman, the watchman, and the nosegay of the past.

Here from Newgate to St. Sepulchre's, from St. Sepulchre's to Newgate, paced Jem that night. A couple of weeks had passed he knew not how. Life had been kept in the lad until now, thanks to the bright buttons on his waistcoat, and the new gloss of his trousers, but this sort of living could not go on much longer.

He had slept in the open air each night; he had gone about "seeing the big world," each day, and a wonderful world, no doubt, it did appear to him, in spite of the small share in its traffics or its pleasures which he had taken. His eyes had feasted on many a new sight. He had seen the dome of St. Paul's from within; he had also seen the same side of the penny theatre of the New Cut. He had hung over London bridge, and tried to count the spires of the city. He had been down to the docks and had been bewildered with the forest of masts there. He had been among the dust heaps of Spitalfields. He had groped his way among the alleys of St. Giles.

He had now almost made up his mind to begin to seek for something to do. He had begun badly enough, doubtless-drunk the first day of his London life-but that should not occur again. Now he would work. Easy words. But those who are older than he, and better acquainted with London life, know that the supply of labour in every sphere of life, far outbids the demand, and that it is nearly as hard to find an empty crossing to sweep as a vacant clerkship in Whitehall to fill, or a vacant borough to contest.

What brought him to St. Sepulchre's that night? I don't know-unless it had been his evil genius, which seems mysteriously to track out some, and re-appears again and again mischievously, just in those junctures in our history when we are on the point of reforming, blotting the page that lies before us, as we turn down a new leaf.

So it was with Jem. The clock had just struck two. The echo had pealed all over the neighbourhood, and other clocks, many and various, caught the sounds, till, if all London did not know it was two o'clock, it was not the fault of the churches.

Jem hears a strange noise up high on the black wall of Newgate prison. Cautiously he halts to look in the dim light of the gas lamps as yet unaided by the August dawn. Twenty or thirty feet above him he sees a pair of dangling legs protruded from a grated window. Then a body follows, then an arm, a head, and in a moment more a rope runs down; there is a shuffling of feet against the rough wall, a heavy fall, a splash of blood, a horrid groan, and all is still. What is it? (To be continued.)

THE METROPOLITAN POLICE TEMPERANCE SOCIETY Have just issued their first annual report, and it is hopeful and encouraging. The society was formed on the 17th September, 1862, and it commenced with five members; the number is now eighty, and besides these there are thirty of the members' wives and children belonging to it. Seven public meetings have been held during the year, and a large number of tracts have been circulated among the police of the N Division.

THE PUBLIC-HOUSE AND THE POOR MAN'S PLEDGE.

The Public-House and the Poor Man's Pledge.

BY A WORKING MAN.

SUPPOSE, kind reader, that you are a working man. There is one toiling beside you, who, through thoughtless, but most sinful indulgence, has became the slave of drink; one who will drink as long as he can find the means, but who, of course, would not drink if he were deprived of opportunity. He is a poor irritable miserable being, his better qualities are all in abeyance,—he hourly condemns himself for the despicable appetite that possesses him (oh! the bitterness of that self-condemnation!); but whenever the chance occurs he runs to the nearest public-house to satisfy the appetite which he detests, and which is daily growing stronger, and assuming more gigantic proportions by what it feeds upon. A human weakness, folly, sin!-call it what you will-but in its nature, at least, not peculiar to his class. The highest authority speaks of it as in a measure characteristic of our frail humanity: "For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do."

Now, if temptation to drink had never been placed in the path of the man-the representative man-of whom I am speaking; if some enactment prohibitive of the sale of strong drink had passed along with the Reform Bill, he would, humanly speaking, have been a respectable and happy member of society-a pleasure to himself, and a blessing to his family-instead of the sad wreck he is to-day. Beginning life with a vague confidence in himself, and proud of his own strength of mind; determined it may be to resist evil habits, but like a great majority of young men, thoughtless and open to temptation, he was easily lured away by the habits and social conventionalities which met him at every turn of life. And there he is now, securely fixed in the net of the fowler, struggling to get out, but only getting more irretrievably involved in the meshes the more he struggles. Let us pity the man and help him if we can. He is not alone. He is but the type of tens of thousands-one of a countless multitude who have been whistled down from their natural sphere of sober endeavour into deplorable enthralment; and one of a countless multitude yet to be whistled down, till such time as society shall be taught to legislate more by the rule of right than by the nick-stick of the gauger.

Yes, that is not an individual sketch. It is the characteristic of a species whose name is legion. I seek to force no crotchet down any man's throat. I aver that every reader of this Journal will, if he looks around him, find many who are struggling ineffectually to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of the drinking habit, and to become, if not better, at least, wiser men ;-yet they do not succeed. And why? How is it that the struggle is ineffectual? I know not all the reasons-God only knows-but I am most fully persuaded that one main reason is the ever-recurring, ever-present temptation of the public-house. When the hour of weakness and despondency-the terribly dark

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hour-comes upon these men, the busy devil is always at their elbow with his vaunted quackery -the alcoholic opiate-and they have nothing more to do than turn round and drink, forget and fall again into folly and misery, mayhap, worse.

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I knew an excellent workman, who had been employed for some time at a little place a number of miles from a public-house. It is not easy to find such a place, the public-houses are planted so thickly, still one occasionally lights upon them. While working there," said this man, "I was more than once troubled with a strong desire for drink. One forenoon, I recollect it came upon me with such overwhelming force, that though I resisted manfully for a time, yet in the end it compelled me to fling down my trowel and take the road. It was a beautiful day, and whether it was the fine transparent atmosphere, the singing of the birds, and the pleasant rustle of the leaves along the road-side, or whether it was the whispering of my better angel, I could not say, but before I was half way to the nearest public-house, the fit had gone completely off me. So I very prudently wheeled to the right-about and returned to my work, not only satisfied, but cheerful. Now, had there been a public-house in, I would assuredly have gone to it and sat down, and in the mood of mind I was then in, I should have had a bout of it, such a bout as might have made me do I know not what; but very certainly something I must have had cause to regret ever after. Well," continued this mason-and his moralising stands to reason—“ the most effectual way of curing intemperance, and making a sober community, is to put the strong drink out of the people's reach; banish it from working men, say, as many miles out to sea as the nearest public-house was from

and I'll wager that they who take a thirst for drink will get rid of it ere they have pulled their boat half-way to it; and, like me, will row contentedly back again."

My working brethren well know what value to attach to the mason's reasoning; I believe, indeed, that the better judgment of those who have had any experience of life will at once coincide with it. And, young brother, do not you turn wholly away from it. The working man, like you, generally begins life with a high sense of his own sufficiency and an unhesitating confidence that, pitch him wherever fortune may, he will always fall upon his feet. Undeterred by the numerous examples around him of men being vicitimised by drink, he toys and coquettes with the bottle, quite able, as he imagines, at any time to cut its acquaintance and give it the go-bye. He laughs at all the warnings given him by his more experienced seniors concerning the insidious nature of the serpent with which he is dallying, and the very probable chance of his becoming a drunkard, if he does not stop betimes and while he can. Pooh! he will never be a drunkard or a drinker; 'tis only silly fellows who become that. Do they think to frighten him from a little social enjoyment by shaking in his face the death's-head of old infatuated men-the "Gabriel Masons" and other terrific wreckers of a good conscience-by telling him that, unless he give up drink, he will become as one of them? He one of them! never! he knows better. "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" He could throw off

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drinking now (but he dosen't do it), and he is quite conscious of his own power to throw it off hereafter, whenever he has a mind.

Thus he goes on, confidently, presumptuously drinking-not much at first-not very much for awhile but gradually more and more-drinking deeply as time progresses, and beginning to like the liquor for its own sake, although still hugging the pitiful delusion that it is not the liquor, but the sociability that he likes. At length his thirtieth summer or winter, as the case may be, comes upon him-a period when all men, not of Bourbon brains, begin to find out, from the blunders and miscalculations they have made, that they are not the infallible fellows they once supposed themselves to be. Our working man-so strong in himself, and consequently very weak if he only knew it at last begins to entertain a hasty notion that he has all this time been going in the wrong direction; that instead of moving upwards he has in fact been sliding down an icy incline, and sliding down all the faster the longer he has continued the run. So the time for a change has Now he will show the manhood that is in him. Come and see what he can do. His resolution shall be tested.

come.

And he does test it bravely. He puts in the pin, or takes the pledge, and becomes a remarkably sober man-a mighty moraliser on drink and drinkers-and as bis associates aver (and I fear with too much truth) a rather harsh interpreter of the actions of his neighbours, and a sharp jiber at their little human weaknesses. An old toper, for example, breathes out in the felt agony of his soul-"Would to heaven that drink had never been manufactured!"—or, "that the legislature would take pity on me and such as me, and, by shutting up distilleries protect us from ourselves." Here our reformed man-our strong man---strikes in with, "What a degrading idea to give utterance to! What! a man to sit down and implore Government to do for him what he is quite able to do for himself. Such a pitiable aspiration would come more fitly out of the mouth of a lawswaddled Japanese, than out of that of a free-born Irishman. Be your own government, and protect yourself from yourself." A capital doctrine (let the writer of this paper interject by the way)—I like it—it would save the nation a vast outlay in jails, police, workhouses, and a host of other expensive and unpleasant machinery, if—if it would work. If it would work,-that's the rub. A painted ship upon a painted ocean looks very beautiful, but it does not sail, and so this doctrine of my friend, very beautiful in theory, halts lamentably in practice. He finds, ere long, that it will not work even in himself, strong in selfcontrol as he fancies he is. Some pay-day he goes into the High Street or the bye-street-the one is very much the same as the other in the matter of temptation, and enters a public-house with some of his comrades. 'Tis only to take shelter from a shower, or smoke a pipe, while the others are discussing their dram; nothing more! But here he forgets himself for five minutes. Five minutes, nay one minute's forgetfulness will sometimes ruin a man-ruin him for ever; he forgets himself, loses his balance, and awakens next morning to discover that, instead of being able to protect himself from himself, he has allowed

the enemy to foil him, even when protected by the shield of the pledge. Unenviable is his state of mind. The stings of conscience, the wounds of self-esteem, the sense of shame, require a salve; and where can a salve be found so quick in operation, and so easily attainable as that to be found in the house close by, with the Government permissive stamp in gilt letters upon it. He drinks deeply, and more deeply than he would have done if he had never taken the pledge at all; for the failure in a struggle, however noble in itself, to get up out of a dangerous position, pitches a man further down hill than if he had remained quiet in his misery and never struggled at all.

After a season spent in hard drinking, and a consecutive season of remorse, his better angel comes again. The man tries once more. All of us know the result. First there is humility; then hopefulness-would it stopped there!--but by-andbye there is confidence; then self-sufficiency; and then, after some months of proper but too selfglorious abstinence, there is the pay-day once more-the public-house-five minutes' forgetfulness-and another fall, followed by consequences more deeply damaging to soul and body than the first. Thus sails he on in the voyage of lifenow on the sober, then on the drunken tack-now bearing forwards to better, again drifting backwards to worse; his best endeavours practically foiled by the false lights permitted by Government to burn all along his course. And so, be

tween alternate swayings and driftings, he doubles that irreparable lapse of life, his fortieth year. when, according to the poet, a man comes to the full knowledge of his folly, and really resolves on self-reformation--" resolves and re-resolves, but dies the same." Our working man now becomes fully sensible of the inadequacy of mere selfdenying ordinances, in the face of daily and ever persistent temptation, to restrain the majority of working men from falling into drinking habits. But, alas! it is too late. Habit rules where resolution failed.

Reader, have I made out a case for legislative restriction? Turn over the subject in your own mind and judge what I say.

The Snowdrop.

THE sunlight scarcely greets thee,
Yet thou art fair and bright;
Though wintry winds blow o'er thee
In each grey morning's light.
Thy head is bending downwards,
As if in timid thought
That thou art first in beauty,
When spring-tide flowers are sought.
The gentle breath of summer
Ne'er fans thy spotless brow;
The golden hours of autumn

Ne'er light thee, Child of Snow!

The stars are all thy sisters,-

For thou camest from the sky In the rushing of the tempest, And the snow-storm's heavy sigh.

INTRODUCTORY LESSONS ON GEOLOGY.

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1. ANCIENT LIFE IN THE WORLD.

THERE was a time when this seemingly fair world did not present the appearance which it now does. This was not only before the shrill whistle of the steam-engine was heard, as it dragged along its load of human beings and goods-not only before the time that the stately ship, with its precious cargo, furrowed the ocean under full sail,— not only before the ancient Egyptians raised their pyramids as monuments of a greatness long since departed; but it was even before the period that man himself, now lord of the creation, had appeared upon the scene. It was antecedent to his existence, even in his primeval state. For long ages before his beginning the earth-his present abode -swarmed with various types of organic existence, both vegetable and animal, fitted doubtless to the conditious under which they were placed. These enjoyed their span of existence and then died away, to be replaced by other creatures, suited to the varying conditions of the globe which they inhabited.

We propose to glance at a few of these ancient forms which now are found embedded in their stony sepulchres, having awaited during a long sleep, discovery by some intelligent being like man, who may be able to understand them, and disentangle the thread of their history.

We must now inform our readers how it is that these memorials of the past are preserved for our inspection, so that we thereby become acquainted in some degree, with the former history of our planet, before yet there was a human eye to see the occurrences on it, or a human hand to hold a pen to note them.

The world, as many of our readers very likely know, is not exactly a globular mass, but shaped something like an orange, with the line or diameter which passes through the poles (the North and South) a little shorter than the diameters passing through the equator (the middle). This is exactly the shape which the world would take if it had been originally fluid, and had then spun round on its axis, or line passing through the poles. From this it may be assumed that the world was once in a fluid state, and that it re

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volved then, as it still does, on its axis, and has got its present shape from the fact of its having been created in a fluid form. Let us now see what its materials are. It is not a mere ball of earth, or vegetable mould," as the mingled mineral and organic matter which lies on the surface is usually called. This only disguises and hides the real structure. Let us clear it away, and find out what is lying underneath. When we have done this, we find that the outer part or "crust" of the globe is composed of stony and earthy layers, one on top of the other, which are called the "strata," and that these are composed in different proportions of sand, and clay, and lime. They are laid one on top of the other, and form a thickness of many thousands of feet. We should never be able to bore through them all, if they were laid fairly and unfractured over each other; but movements from below have sometimes tilted up the underlying parts, and thrown those which were over them to one side, so that we can get at their broken edges. The strata all bear the appearance of having been laid down by the action of water, just as we see in the sand and mud deposited by streams and rivers. So far for the strata. But we must now notice another fact. Below the strata, wherever we go, we find the well-known rock called granite. Sometimes it is underneath, sometimes it has burst up from below, and raised itself above all the surrounding strata, but always, geologically speaking, it is below them, because it is older than they. This is, so to speak, the skeleton, or framework, on which they rest. If we break a piece of granite. we shall find that it is composed of three different minerals a greyish one, called quartz, a shining one, called mica, and a whitish one, called felspar. Moreover, granite has a crystalline structure, like that which may be produced by heat, and quite dissimilar to the layer-like appearance of the strata. Felspar has sometimes been produced artificially in furnaces by the action of heat alone. When the quartz, mica, and felspar are analysed by the chemist, they are found to contain lime, clay, and sand, which form the materials of the strata.

From all this we conclude that granite, the original framework of the world, was originally fluid from great heat, and that after it had cooled down so that water would lie on its surface, this water began to wear it away-to wash away its materials and spread them out in the form of beds upon the floor of the primeval ocean, and so to form those strata in which we now find the earliest traces of organic beings.

We shall take a hasty glance at some of these forms of ancient existence, beginning with those lowest down in the strata, and therefore oldest in point of time. The earliest fossil known is found in what are called the Cambrian rocks, and has the appearance of a number of rays proceeding from a centre, or else in the shape of fans branching out from each other; to this the name of

Öldhamia" has been given. There has been some dispute as to the precise nature of this creature when it was alive, but it is now very generally considered to have been a sort of Polype. It is to be found at Brayhead, in the County of Wicklow.

Passing upwards from the "Cambrian" rocks

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