attitude ever so little. A burly roll of cloaks, rugs, capes, and loose wrappers, placed in the corner, and tanquam cadaver, passive and motionless. I have sometimes in my travels lighted on a strangely shaped mountain, whose huge curves, and sombre colouring have interested me indefinably. In the rude mass at the far angle, Mr. Jos Larkin, I fancy, found some such subject of contemplation. And the more he looked, the more he felt disposed to look.

As they got on there was more night fog, and the little lamp at top shone through a halo. The fellowpassenger at the opposite angle lay back, all cloaks and mufflers, with nothing distinct emerging but the fur cap at top, and the tip-it was only the tip now-of the shining shoe on the floor.

The gentleman was absolutely motionless and silent. And Mr. Larkin, though his mind was pretty universally of the inquisitive order, began in this particular case to feel a special curiosity. It was partly the monotony and their occupying the carriage all to themselves-as the two uncommunicative seamen did the Edystone Lighthouse-but there was, beside, an indistinct feeling, that, in spite of all these wrappers and swathings, he knew the outlines of that figure; and yet the likeness must have been of the rudest possible sort.

He could not say that he recognized anything distinctly-only he fancied that some one he knew was sitting there, unrevealed, inside that mass of clothing. And he felt, moreover, as if he ought to be able to guess who he was.

BUT this sort of musing and wonderment leads to nothing; and Mr. Jos Larkin being an active-minded man, and practical withal, in a little while shook it off, and from his breastpocket took a little treasure of a pocket-book, in which were some bank-notes, precious memoranda in pencil, and half-a-dozen notes and letters, bearing upon cases and negociations on which, at this juncture, he was working.

Into these he got, and now and then brought out a letter bearing on some point or speculation, and read it through, and then closed his eyes for three minutes at a time, and thought. But he had not his tin boxes there; and, with a man of his stamp, speculation, which goes upon guess as to dates and quantities, which are all ascertainable by reference to black and white, soon looses its interest. And the evidence in his pocket being pretty soon exhausted, he glanced again at his companion over the way. He had not moved all this while. He had a high stand-up collar to the cape he wore, which covered his cheeks and nose, and outside was loosely swathed a large, cream-coloured, cashmere handkerchief. A helmet-shaped fur cap covered his forehead and eyebrows, and left, in fact, but a narrow streak of separation between.

Through this however for the first time Jos Larkin now saw the glitter of a pair of eyes gazing at him, he fancied. At all events there was the glitter, and the gentleman was awake.

Jos returned the gentleman's gaze. It was his lofty aristocratic stare; and he expected to see the glittering lights that peeped through the dark chink between fur and collar, shut up under its rebuke. But nothing of the kind took place, and the ocular exercises of the Attorney were totally ineffectual.

If the fellow knew that his fixed stare was observed through his narrow embrasure-and Larkin thought he could hardly be insensible to the reproof of his return fire-he must be a particularly impertinent person. It would be ridiculous, however, to continue a contest of this kind; so the Attorney lowered the window and looked out. Then he pulled it up, and took to his newspaper again, and read the police cases, and a very curious letter from a poor-house doctor, describing a boy who was quite blind in daylight, but could see very fairly by gas or candle light; and then he lighted upon a very odd story, and said to be undergoing special sifting at the hands of Sir Samuel Squailes, of a policeman on a certain beat, in Fleet-street, not far from Temple-Bar, who every night saw at or about the

same hour, a certain suspicious-looking figure walk along the flag-way and enter a passage. Night after night he pursued this figure, but always lost it in the same passage. On the last occasion, however, he succeeded in keeping him in view, and came up with him in a court, when he was rewarded with a sight of such a face as caused him to fall to the ground in a fit. This was the Clamp-court ghost, and I believe he was left in that disputable state, and never after either exploded or confirmed.

So having ended all these studies, the Attorney lifted up his eyes again, as he lowered his newspaper, and beheld the same glittering gaze fixed upon him through the same horizontal cranny.

He fancied the eyes were laughing. He could not be sure, of course, but at all events the persistent stare was extremely, and perhaps determinedly, impertinent. Forgetting the constitutional canon through which breathes the genuine spirit of British liberty, he felt for a moment that he was such a King as that Cat had no business to look at; and he might, perhaps, have politely intimated something of the kind, had not the enveloped offender made a slight and lazy turn which, burying his chin still deeper in his breast, altogether concealed his eyes, and so closed the offensive scrutiny.

In making this change in his position, slight as it was, the gentleman in the superfluous clothing reminded Mr. Jos Larkin very sharply for an instant of somebody. There was the rub; who could it be?

The figure was once more a mere mountain of rug. What was the peculiarity in that slight movement something in the knee? something in the elbow; something in the general character?

Why had he not spoken to him? The opportunity, for the present, was past. But he was now sure that his fellow-traveller was an acquaintance, who had probably recognized him. Larkin except when making a mysterious trip at election times, or in an emergency, in a critical case-was a frank, and as he believed, could be a fascinating compagnon de voyage, such and so great was his urbanity on a journey. He rather liked talking with people; he sometimes heard things not wholly valueless, and once

or twice had gathered hints in this way which saved him trouble, or money, which is much the same thing. Therefore upon principle he was not averse from that direst of bores, railway conversation.

And now they slackened speed, with a long, piercing whistle, and came to a standstill at "East Haddon" (with a jerk upon the last syllable), "East Haddon, East Haddon," as the herald of the station declared, and Lawyer Larkin sat straight up, very alert, with a budding smile, ready to blow out into a charming radiance the moment his fellow-traveller rose perpendicularly, as was to be expected, and peeped from his window.

But he seemed to know intuitively that Larkin intended telling him, apropos of the station, that story of the Haddon property, and Sir James Wotton's will, which as told by the good Attorney and jumbled by the clatter, was perhaps a little dreary. At all events he did not stir, and carefully abstained from wakening, and in a few seconds more they were again in motion.

They were now approaching Shillingsworth, where the Attorney was to get out, and put up for the night, having a deed with him to be executed in that town, and so animating his journey with this small incident of profit.

Now, therefore, looking at his watch, and consulting his time-table, he got his slim valise from under on top of the seat before him, together with his hat-case, despatch-box, stick, and umbrella, and brushed off with his handkerchief some of the gritty railway-dust that lay drifted in exterior folds and hollows of his coat, rebuttoned that garment with precision, arranged his shirt-collar, stuffed his muffler into his coat pocket, and made generally that rude sacrifice to the graces with which natty men precede their exit from the dust and ashes of this sort of sepulture.

At this moment he had just eight minutes more to go, and the glitter of the pair of eyes, staring between the muffler and the fur, met his view once

more.

Mr. Larkin's cigar case was open in his hand in a moment, and with such a smile as a genteel perfumer offers his wares with, he presented it towards the gentleman who was built up in the stack of garments.

He merely shook his head with the slightest imaginable nod and a wave of a pudgy hand in a soiled dog-skin glove, which emerged for a second from under a cape, in token that he gratefully declined the favour.

Mr. Larkin smiled and shrugged regretfully, and replaced the case in his coat pocket. Hardly five minutes remained now. Larkin glanced round for a topic.

"My journey is over for the present, sir, and perhaps you would find these little things entertaining."

And he tendered with the same smile "Punch," the "Penny Gleaner," and "Gray's Magazine," a religious serial. They were, however, similarly declined in pantomime.

"He's not particularly polite, whoever he is," thought Mr. Larkin, with a sniff. However he tried the effect of a direct observation. So getting one seat nearer, he said :—

"Wonderful place Shillingsworth, sir; one does not really, until one has visited it two or three times over, at all comprehend its wealth and importance; and how justly high it deserves to hold its head amongst the provincial emporia of our productive industry."

The shapeless traveller in the corner touched his ear with his pudgy dogskin fingers, and shook his hand and head a little, in token either that he was deaf, or the noise such as to prevent his hearing, and in the next moment the glittering eyes closed, and the pantomimist appeared to be asleep.

And now, again, the train subsided to a stand-still, and Shillingsworth resounded through the night air; and Larkin scrambled forward to the window, by which sat the enveloped gentleman, and called the porter, and, with many unheeded apologies, pulled out his various properties, close by the knees of the tranquil traveller.

So, Mr. Larkin was on the platform, and his belongings stowed away against the wall of the station-house. He made an enquiry of the guard, with whom he was acquainted, about his companion; but the guard knew nothing of the party, neither did the porter, to whom the guard put a similar question.

So, as Larkin walked down the platform, the whistle sounded, and the train glided forward, and as it

But, no, there was "no enginenot nearer than the junction, and she might not be spared."

"How far is the junction ?"
"Nineteen and a-half."

"Nineteen miles! They'll never bring me there, by horse, under two hours, they are so cursed tedious. Why have not you got a spare engine at a place like this? Shillingsworth! Nice management! Are you certain! Where's the station-master.'

All this time he kept staring after the faint pulsations on the air that indicated the flight of the engine.

But it would not do. The train-the image upon earth of the irrevocable, the irretrievable-was gone, neither to be overtaken nor recalled. The telegraph was not then, as now, whispering secrets all over England, at the rate of two hundred miles a second, and five shillings per twenty words. Larkin would have given large money for an engine, to get up with the train that was now some five miles on its route, at treble, quadruple, the common cost of such a magical appliance; but all was vain. He could only look and mutter after it wildly. Vain to conjecture for

what station that traveller in the fur cap was bound! Idle speculation! Mere distraction!

Only that Mr. Larkin was altogether the man he was, I think he would have cursed freely.

LITTLE FAIRY, all this while, continued, in our Church language, "sick and weak." The Vicar was very sorry, but not afraid. His little man was so bright and merry, that he seemed to him the very spirit of life. He could not dream of his dying. It was sad, to be sure, the little man so many days in his bed, too languid to care for toy or story, quite silent, except when, in the night time, those weird monologues began which showed that the fever had reached his brain. The tones of his pleasant little voice, in those sad flights of memory and fancy, busy with familiar scenes and occupations, sounded wild and plaintive in his ear. And when "Wapsie" was mentioned, sometimes the Vicar's eyes filled, but he smiled through this with a kind of gladness at the child's affection. "It will soon be over, my darling! You will be walking with Wapsie in a week again." The sun could as soon cease from shining as little Fairy from living. The thought he would not allow near him.

Doctor Buddle had been six miles away that evening with a patient, and looked in at the Vicar's long after the candles were lighted.

He was not satisfied with little Fairy--not at all satisfied. He put his hand under the clothes and felt his thin, slender limbs--thinner than ever now. Dry and very hot they were--and little man babbling his nonsense about little boys, and his Wapsie," and toys, and birds, and the mill-stream, and the church-yard -of which, with so strange a fatality, children, not in romance only, but reality, so often prattle in their feverish wanderings.

He felt his pulse. He questioned his mamma, and cross-examined the nurse, and looked sad and very much annoyed; and then bethought him of something to be tried; and having given his directions to the maid, he went home in haste, and returned in half an hour with something in a phial--a few drops in water, and

little man sat up, leaning on his Wapsie's arm, and took it very good," his nurse said, approvingly; and he looked at them all wonderingly, for two or three moments, and so tired; and so they laid him down again, and then his spoken dreams began once more.

Doctor Buddle was dark and short in his answers to voluble little Mrs. Wylder-though, of course, quite respectful-and the Vicar saw him down the narrow stairs, and they turned into the study for a moment, and, said Buddle, in an under toneHe's very ill-I can say nothing

else."

And there was a pause.

The little colour he had, receded from the Vicar's face; for the looks and tones of good-natured Buddle were not to be mistaken. He was reading little Fairy's death warrant. "I see, Doctor-I see; you think he'll die," said the Vicar, staring at him. Oh, Doctor, my little Fairy!"

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The Doctor knew something of the poor Vicar's troubles-of course in a village most things of the kind are known-and often, in his brisk, rough way, he thought, as, with a nod and a word, he passed the lank cleric, under the trees or across the common, with his bright, prattling, sunny-haired little boy by the hand-or encountered them telling stories on the style, near the Castle meadow-what a gleam of sunshine was always dancing about his path, in that smiling, wayward, loving, little fellow-and now a long Icelandic winter was coming, and the path was to know that light no more.

"With children, you know, I—I always say there's a chance--but you are right to look the thing in the face

and I'll be here the first call in the morning; and you know where to find me, in the meantime ;" and the Doctor shook hands very hard with the Vicar at the hall-door, and made his way homeward-the Vicar's eyes following him till he was out of sight.

Then William Wylder shut the hall-door, and turned about.

Little Fairy's drum was hanging from a peg on the hat-stand-the drum that was to sound no more in the garden, or up and down the hall, with the bright-haired little drummer's song. There would be no more interruption now-the Vicar would write his sermons undisturbed; no more consolations claimed-no more broken toys to be mended-some of the innocent little rubbish lay in the study. It should never move from that-nor his drum-nor that little hat and cape, hanging on their peg, with the tiny boots underneath. No more prattling at unseasonable times-no more crying-no more singing no more laughing; all these interruptions were quiet now, and altogether gone-"Little man! little Fairy! Oh, was it possible!" But memory would call up the Vicar from his half-written sermon. He would miss his troublesome little man, when the sun shone out that he used to welcome-when the birds hopped on the window-stone, to find the crumbs that little man used to strew there; and when his own little 'canary"Birdie" he used to call him-would sing and twitter in his cage-and the time came to walk out on his lonely visits.

He must walk alone by the shopdoors-where the little man was so admired and up the Mill-road, and in the Castle meadow, and over the style where they used to sit.

Poor Dolly! Her Willie would not tell her yet. He kneeled down in the study-"Little Man's" top, and some cut paper nondescripts, were lying where he had left them, at his elbow-and he tried to pray, and then he remembered that his darling ought to know that he was going into the presence of his Maker.

Yes, he would tell poor Dolly first, and then his little man. He would repeat his hymn with him, and pray and so he went up the nursery stairs.

Poor Dolly, very tired, had gone to lie down for a little. He would not disturb her-no, let her enjoy for an hour more, her happy illusion.

When he went into the nursery little Fairy was sitting up, taking his medicine; the nurse's arm round his thin shoulders. He sat down beside

"They say that little manikin”. suddenly the Vicar stopped. say that little manikin won't get well."

"And am I always to be sick, here in my little bed, Wapsie ?" whispered little Fairy, in his dreamy, earnest way, that was new to him.

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No, darling; not always sick; you'll be happier than ever-but not here; little man will be taken by his Saviour, that loves him best of alland he'll be in heaven-and only have a short time to wait, and maybe his poor Wapsie will come to him, please God, and his darling mamma-and we'll all be happy together, for ever, and never be sick or sorry any more, my treasure my little Fairy-my darling."

And little man looked on him with his tired eyes, not quite understanding what it meant, nor why Wapsie was crying; and the nurse said

"He'd like to be dozin', sir, he's so tired, please." So down the poor little fellow lay, his "Wapsie" praying by his bedside.

When, in a little time, poor Dolly returned, her Willie took her round the waist, as on the day when she accepted him, and led her tenderly into the other room, and told her all, and they hugged and wept together. Oh, Dolly, Dolly!"

"Oh, Willie, darling! Oh, Willie, our precious treasure our only one !" And so they walked up and down