despair. A moment afterwards a hand was placed timidly on his shoulder.

"What is it, Sally?" he asked, looking up. "Never mind, master," said the girl

supper."

Sit up and 'ave yer

The sympathy of the drudge was to his spirit as a fresh well in a desert of dreary misery.

No, thank you," he said, much moved. "I have no appetite." Sally began to whimper :

"Arter I've gone and fried the loveliest sausages ye ever smelt in 'onour o' yer comin' 'ome."

"If the prodigal son has no appetite he cannot eat the fatted calf."

"But it ain't calf," protested Sally.

"Y'hextravagant hussy!" interrupted the dreaded voice of the mistress. "So I've caught yer givin' a party, and a ball, and a swarry, when the cat's away, 'ave I? All the two gases a-blazin', and the table laid for supper. And where's all the company bolted to? Or was it a case of two's company and three's none a young man or a bobby to keep off other thieves?"

She was glancing suspiciously around, lifting up the covers, and peering into the sugar-basin and the milk-jug.

"Ye're a liar!" screamed Sally, stirred to her depths by the last insinuation. "The company is on the sofa." "What, that vagabond company? He's no company o'

mine."

"What rot! Ain't you 'is mother?"

'Don't you try to bamboozle me, 'cos ye might as well try to catch a bullock on that 'ere fly-paper. When that supper was laid out, 'ow did ye know that Jack 'ud be a foundlin'?"

"Summat inside 'ere told me," said Sally earnestly, laying her hand on her breast.

"Oh, indeed! I didn't know as ye nourished a parrot in yer bosom. P'raps that's where all the sugar goes!"

“P’raps it is,” Sally cried defiantly.

"No wonder ye've got a sweetheart then," retorted Mrs. Dawe.

Tears of vexation came into Sally's eyes.

"I ain't got no sweet'art," she protested, "and ain't going to get married never!"

"Goin' to be a old maid, eh?"

"If I lives so long!"

"Ye don't expect me to swallow that!" said Mrs. Dawe disdainfully.

No, it's for Jack," replied Sally innocently.

"Don't twist my words, or I'll twist yer nose for ye. No woman 'ud be a old maid if she could help it. I've been married myself, and, though I'm a widder now, do I regret it? Not at all. But a old maid is a widder afore 'er time. But, old maid or no old

maid, yer don't catch the old woman goin' to Salvation meetin's any more, leavin' ye to lay suppers for strange gents."

"Is Master Jack a strange gent? Can't I lay supper for 'im ?" "Lay supper for 'im !" repeated Mrs. Dawe scornfully. “Teach yer grandmother to lay eggs."

At this point, there being a failure of repartee on the part of Sally, the prodigal son was able to interpose. "The supper was prepared for me, but I have no appetite."

"That's you all over!" replied Mrs. Dawe, turning upon him. "When people goes to the trouble of fryin' the best sausages for ye, ye've got no stomach for 'em. All you've got a appetite for is 'owlin' 'ims all night as if ye 'ad the nightmare, and draggin' yer poor old mother out o' bed to run about like a fire-engine, and if ye ain't goin' to eat 'em I will."

So saying, Mrs. Dawe sat down and devoured the succulent viands, Sally watching her with ill-concealed indignation.

"Just you get up to bed," her mistress exclaimed, pausing with uplifted fork. "Ye'll be fit for nothin' in the mornin'." Sally obeyed sulkily, and mother and son were left alone.

Mrs. Dawe finished her meal leisurely. Then she went to a drawer and took therefrom a letter. "Anger is short madness," says the great classical author, Delectus; and on this occasion Mrs. Dawe's anger conformed to definition, for its fury was now giving place to the soothing influences of the sausages.

"Ere's a letter from 'Lizer," she observed more gently. "Yer a nice son to run away, and leave me all the trouble of this 'ere la vsuit as if it was me that breach o' promised instead o' you. I've arxed all about it for ye.”

Jack sat up immediately much interested, and took the letter. He had almost forgotten Eliza during those three days he was living in the philosophic calm of the gods of Epicurus; but now some of the old anxiety revived. And what was the result of your inquiries?" he asked.

66

66

Things ain't so black as 'Lizer painted 'em. I don't think there'll be any need for ye to appear at all."

"Thank God! How is that?"

"'Cos I think we'll be able to settle it. She ain't the fust gal as arxed for 2,000 and got a farden. I've been to 'Lizer's brother, for I couldn't talk to 'Lizer without flyin' in her face, and let 'em know that the jury ain't such fools as they look for. And 'e promised to 'ave a talk with 'er and let us know what she said, and I think she'll be glad to square it without the bother and the disgrace of going into Court; and yesterday this letter came for ye, so I want ye to read it to me, and I'll warrant she won't talk so big now." The painter took the letter and read aloud as follows:

"DEAR JACK,

66 I write you these few lines, hoping it will find you quite well as thank God it leaves me at present. Your cunning attempt to

overreach me shall not succeed. Thinking that I had been persuaded by you to stop proceedings, you then sent your mother to endeavour to compromise for a paltry sum. But you will find you have only overreached yourself. The telegram you sent me is worth its weight in diamonds. When the jury see that you have actually offered the two thousand pounds, they will know that I am entitled to them at least; so, by the advice of my Solicitor, I shall demand three thousand."

Mrs. Dawe was struggling to speak-black in the face with the effort.

"You offered her 2,000!" she burst out.

"Yes," said Jack, trembling with apprehension of the coming storm, and feeling that he had really made a fool of himself, and put himself at the mercy of an unscrupulous girl.

"Then ye've brought me to the workus'!" exclaimed Mrs. Dawe, wringing her hands. And she unchained upon him a leash of biting epithets. His character for intelligence was torn to pieces. He had no more brains than an apple-dumpling, he was as destitute of common sense as Mrs. Prodgers' pork-pies of pork; she would rather have had an elephant for a son in a lawsuit. Further aggravated by Jack's silence, she discovered that he was as blackhearted as an old frying-pan, and had no scruple in smashing up an old-established business, for the sake of enriching a good-fornothing girl, who had hooked him by her pretty face, despite his mother's warnings, and whom he loved still. Did he think that the old woman hadn't all along known that disgraceful plot to get up a sham breach of promise case, and pay the damages out of her hardearned savings and elope to America, and leave her to lay her weary bones in a pauper's grave?

"You are talking very absurdly," said Jack, with some dignity "And in any case I do not see that the money would come out of your pocket."

"It's all one, y' idiot! This is Dawe and Son, ain't it? Ye don't forget to arx for yer arf profits! The business is the business."

"We will waive that point," said Jack, taken somewhat aback by this reasoning, "I can only repeat that in offering Eliza what she demanded I was guided principally by a strong objection to appearing in Court."

"Then see what ye've done for yerself. If ye 'ad left it to me, I would a' got ye out o' that pickle. But in course ye don't arx nobody's advice but yer own. Now ye're in for it. Ye'll have to appear and be the laughin' stock of the country."

"But I will not appear, come what may,” replied the painter firmly.

Mrs. Dawe grew white with alarm. Was her son once more enunciating one of those olden resolutions from which he never departed? Her tone became more conciliatory.

"Now just you listen to reason, Jack. Let me tell ye what I've found out about the law. If ye don't take any notice of the writ, the case will go by the fault, and it'll be tried afore the Sheriff's Court, and there'll be nobody there to speak for ye, and 'Lizer'll 'ave it all 'er own way, and set up a carriage out of our blood and sweat; and if ye do take notice and send up a lawyer, the jury will think ye dare not stand cross-examination, and you are a devil and 'Lizer a angel, and they'll damage ye according."

"Cross-examination!" As the horrible potentialities of the process flashed upon him, a cold tremor ran through all his meinbers. "They may think me devil as much as they like,” he said, "I will not appear."

66

And yet they say, talk o' the devil and he's sure to appear!" groaned Mrs. Dawe. I allus knowed ye'd be the ruin o' me; but that's the way of children: they makes ye ill the day they're born, and worrits ye till the day ye're dead. Oh, why did ye interfere! If ye 'adn't put yer finger in the pie, 'Lizer wouldn't 'a got such a big plum !"

You mistake in supposing you could have settled it," said Jack, who had been glancing over the rest of the broken-hearted girl's letter. "She says that she might have been willing to compromise had I not had the cruel audacity to tell her that I loved another. The spirit of revenge burns in her breast, and she says that no earthly consideration shall prevent her dragging me into Court. I believe she means it. She always appeared a passionate girl, and the poets have taught us how far the spretæ injuria forma can lead one. If Virgil could exclaim, 'Tantane ira cœlestibus animis, is it surprising that a woman of volcanic temperament should determine to avenge herself by any means in her power?"

"I've already told ye to keep yer fine words for them as didn't know ye from a baby, when ye could only say 'Mummy.' I don't know what ye told 'Lizer a lie for; as yer late father said, 'lyin' is never so bad as when it's no good.' If ye loved another gal, ye could no more 'ide it from me than ye could your brain-fever, and I've seen no marks of it. And I don't see that 'Lizer is a volcanic woman-she don't smoke, does she? If ye called 'er a earthquaky woman, upsettin' the oldest cook-shop in Bethnal Green, ye'd be about right. And if she says ye must go to Court, to Court ye must go."

"

Only one woman can command that," said the painter, with a melancholy smile.

"Then I am that woman," exclaimed Mrs. Dawe, rising in regal majesty. "To Court ye shall go if I 'ave to drag ye there in a wheelbarrow, and ye shall say exactly what I tells ye."

"An end to this!" said Jack, also rising. "The judgment must go by default, and I will pay the damages."

"And let 'Lizer 'ave all the lies to 'erself," hissed Mrs. Dawe fiercely.

"Well, at most, I shall send up a lawyer to represent me," he

said good-humouredly, glad to find he was not giving way. "Perhaps there should be no taxation without representation. But you will never get me to appear in person." He was not prepared for the reception of this effusion of independence. The old woman lost her head entirely. After the wild revel of maternal power she had been enjoying that night, to be defied at all was unspeakingly galling. But to be defied in a matter of such vital importance was to lose more than authority. The timid barn-fowl will fight for its young ones, and Mrs. Dawe, who was by no means timid, abandoned herself to a seizure of verbal pugnacity, shrinking at nothing to defend her solitary young one against himself; to say nothing of her own interests.

Drawing herself up with the prophetic fury of a Cassandra, she launched into rhapsodical objurgations and demoniac denunciations of the evils to be. The painter's hair stood on end as he listened in awe-struck silence to the tale of the intolerable days he would be made to endure before the trial. Shaking her gray hair, quivering with electric passion, unresting and maniacal of gesture, and lavish of rough metaphor and uncouth simile, the old sibyl declared that she would not fail to be present, and that if he did not accompany her, he was no longer to look for peace till the sexton's spade battened down the clods over his early grave. It was a weird and unholy scene-and the clock of the church of St. John, mournfully striking two, intensified the nocturnal stillness which was being so impiously disturbed.

CHAPTER XII.

A NOCTURNAL VISITOR.

AT last his mother was gone to bed. The striking of two had warned her that only a few hours of sleep remained, and she presently departed with a final burst of invective that would have done credit to the author of the epistle against the Ibis. Jack sat for some time rigid and silent, his hands pressed to his aching brow. After a while, muttering "There is no help for it," he rose, opened the drawer of the table, and, after some search, discovered a sheet of letter-paper and an envelope. Then, re-seating himself, he began to write.

So deep a stillness now reigned within and without, that had he not been engrossed in his task, the silence would, by contrast, have been almost oppressive. The scampering of a mouse across the floor gave him a little startled thrill. His nerves were unstrung, for hardly had he resumed his momentarily-interrupted writing when he felt himself falling under the spell of a strange, eerie sensation