food, while she gave us her time and did our chores. And so in this way we made it unnecessary for her to continue her sad trade.

This got us the name of associating with

But

bad women; for it was said that we lived partly on her earnings; and made us to be shyly looked on by our shopmates. Joshua's mind was set to do the thing that is right; and what men said against him, not understanding facts or motives, hurt him no more than that dogs should bark at shadows. That which is, not that which seems, nor what folks choose to say, was what he lived for; and Mary Prinsep was only a text and an occasion, like others.

And even when, one day, the men fairly hooted him down and hustled him into the street, and me along with him, because

when he was chaffed savagely about "his girl" he answered them mildly enough; "Mates, did our great Master receive Mary Magdalene and all sinners, or did He not? And if He did as you may find for yourselves—am I too pure to help them?”—he only said to me, wiping the mud from his

torn coat; "You are not afraid, John?

You'll go on the right way, whatever comes of it?"—and not a word even of impatience against those who had misused us, calling us canters," "white-livered hypocrites,"

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and worse words still. No, I was not afraid, I said. I would stand shoulder to shoulder with him through it all; and where he led, there would I follow, if we sunk up to our very necks in the slough of the world's reproach. And we were not far off.

CHAPTER VI.

AMONG the rest of the doubtful characters with which our court abounded, was one Joe Traill, who had been in prison many a time for petty larceny and the like, but who, the last time he was had up, was convicted of burglary. However, he was out now on a ticket-of-leave, and fast going the way to get it cancelled, with a new score to the back of it. Respectability and the police were bent on elbowing poor Joe into the mire, which was only too much his natural element. He had been crotch deep in the mud from the earliest; a gutter child, in whose

very blood ran the hereditary taint; a thief, the son of thieves, the grandson of thieves; a thing of mud from head to heel, inside. and out; dirty, dissipated, shiftless, and with no more moral principle in him than he had of education. His only morality indeed, was his cleverness in being able to break the law without being found out; and when he was most down on his luck, he was disposed to think most meanly of himself.

He was one of those who stink in the

nostrils of cleanly, civilised society, and who are its shame and secret sore. And cleanly, civilised society, not being able to make a good job of him as he stood, thrust him out of its sight, and tried to forget him behind the prison grating. There was no place for Joe in this great world of ours. There was no work for him to do, because he could do

none requiring any of the deftness got by practice; and if by chance he got a job anywhere, he lost it mysteriously in a day or so; and, double as he might, he found the dogs of detection too sharp for him.

So he said to Joshua one night in his blithe way--poor Joe! he had not fibre enough in him to take even his misfortunes. seriously—that there was nothing for him but the old line along with his pals, making a running fight of it, now up now down, as his luck went.

"We'll see if something better won't turn up," said Joshua. "Burglary's a bad trade, Joe."

Only one I've got at my fingers' ends, governor," laughed the thief; "and starvation is a worse go than quod."

"Well, till you've learned a better, share

I