patience an impatience quickened by There was no possible way of guessing Nuna's praise a sense of wrong-doing at Paul's moods; he was, as Mrs. Fagg hung over him, but did not check his would have said, "so touch-and-go." The progress. As he drew nearer and nearer the cottage, thought grew confused; a tumultuous, throbbing joy left no room for aught beside its own presence.

The door opened, and there was it. Patty.

"I'll come out," she said, "it is so dark in here."

There was no surprise in her voice. It seemed to Paul that she had felt his presence before she saw him. Patty would have liked to ask him indoors, only then he would have seen how poor her home

Patty had meant to speak calmly, and like a lady, as she phrased it, but her in- "It's Father," Patty whispered; and dignation mastered her. He wanted her then her keen wits helped her lover. to go to church, did he, that he might look" He can't see us because of the beanat her, and then walk home with Miss vines; go away over the front palings. Nuna, without so much as turning his go quick!" head?

There was a murmur of voices, but no sounds of anger. He waited yet for some time, but there was no sign of life. He heard the front door shut, and some creaking bolts drawn across it, and then he turned slowly towards the lane again.

Patty had inwardly blessed her father's thrifty ways. He could not see her blushes in the darkness; and the very fact of finding her thus, and not, as he expected, burning a candle through the whole evening, put Roger in good humour with her, and made him unsuspicious.

"Well, lass, I'm come home later than I thought, but I'd have been later yet if Mr. Bright hadn't given me a lift; an' I've brought you news you'll like to hear."

"Oh, what's that?" Patty's heart fluttered violently; she longed to run upstairs and realize some of the delight of the last few minutes; it was dreadful to be forced away from the thought of it.

"Well," Roger spoke almost jocularly, "I'm not going to say all on a sudden; I'll make ye guess, lass; there's a visitor coming to see ye."

At any other time Patty must have guessed his meaning, but now she could not even take in his words.

"A visitor? Do you want supper, Father?"

"I'll have a crust," he said; and in the faint glimmer he found his chair and sat down in it, while Patty disappeared into the washhouse.

A little chill fell on her father.

We are

"How that fellow took on for the loss of his mother!" said Roger to himself. "He couldn't have done more if she'd left to him instead of to me. And how that wife of his did try to comfort him!"

A sort of smothered sigh escaped him. "She means well, does Patty," he said to himself.

Patty came back with a thin candle in a flat tin candlestick, and then she set a loaf, a fragment of cheese, and a knife on the table.

Roger drew his chair up and ate in silence.

"I may as well have a drink," he said; "I'm thirsty." She fetched him some water, and then she tried to think of something to say.

"How's Grandmother?"

Roger took a draught out of the brown pitcher, and then set it down on the table.

"She's dead! And, Patty, she's left all she'd got to leave in trust to me against you're old enough to want it: it beant much, lass, but it 'ull be useful one day."

Patty's eyes brightened for an instant; then a look of disappointment came into her face. She made no answer.

Something in her silent manner struck her father as new and unusual.

He lifted the candle suddenly to his daughter's face, and gave her a keen, searching glance.

Patty did not wince; she had recovered her self-possession, and the very manifestation of her father's suspicion put her on guard to baffle it.

Roger nodded.

"I don't see as it can be any other, unless ye've friends in Guildford as I knows naught on. I saw Miss Patience in the street yesterday, and she said she was coming over to Ashton Rectory, to-morrow or next day, to wait on Miss Nuna Beaufort, and she 'ud be glad if you'd go up and see her there."

"What makes ye so quiet, lass? Why don't ye guess who your visitor'll be?" "Is it some one at Guildford?" And apt to proportion our notions by the mood then she went on quickly, roused suddenly in which we view things. If Roger's jour-out of her deadness to outside things by ney had proved unsuccessful, and if on his an eager hope: "Is it Miss Patience herreturn he had found Patty writing a letter self? by the light of a half-burnt candle, he would have been as cold as usual, and would not have expected any warmth from his child; but he was in singularly bright spirits. Grandmother Wood had died easily, and had left her savings to "her daughter's husband, Roger Westropp, for the use of his only child Martha." This was better than he had expected; he should have no trouble now in keeping the money from being spent in ribbons and rubbish. It had been a triumph, too, to rescue the money from his brother-in-law Peter. Grandmother Wood had only left her son ten pounds; he had displeased her by an imprudent early marriage, but at her death she had forgiven and blessed both him and his wife

"You ought to have asked her here." Patty spoke crossly; a vision of Nuna waited on obsequiously by Miss Coppock, with the curtseying manner the milliner observed towards her customers, was disturbing. "Miss Patience can come over all the way from Guildford to wait on that Miss Nuna, and yet she won't take the trouble so much as to walk the length of

Carving's Wood Lane to see an old friend | stairs to her little bare room, and listened like me."

TERRIBLE accounts continue to be received as | have the dates and sugar of caravans been to the famine in Persia. At Yezd, some fifty children have been killed and eaten by the starving Mahomedan population. So severe is the famine in certain parts that not only

From Temple Bar.
PAUPER LORDS.

if they chose; but that would be derogation, and a noble would starve rather than CERTAIN first appearances in a new that his nobility should suffer disparagecharacter have been made of late by peers, ment by industry. It is said that the or sons or connections of peers. The the- most destitute nobles managed to keep a atre in which these first appearances have servant or two, although no service was been made, and made so frequently in the possible; food, fuel, and other desirable past year or two, is the Bankruptcy Court. things being altogether wanting. It seems, Their lordships, by themselves or their however, that what was derogation to the representatives, have had to make explan- | nobleman was not so to the noblewoman; ations to their Honours, the registrars, and ¦ at least, when starvation threatened, the world has not been much edified by amusement could be made as profitable what has transpired. In one style or an- as work. Noble Venetian ladies might other, the peerage has not been without a string pearls or beads as a pastime, and Hastings since the time of the son of the then go forth, if they were poor, and be Conqueror. When the late Marquis of privately paid for their labour. The lady Hastings came of age, and was fined for as heartily ashamed of herself as the having cock-fighting on Sundays in his Irish knight's widow who was reduced to mansion, Dorrington Hall, people augured cry "butter" for sale in the market, and badly of the future, and almost foresaw" hoped to goodness nobody would hear that crash which came with bankruptcy her ". - scuffled off with her groat for and ruin, and ended miserably with death. wages, and bought a poor twopennyworth The Marquis had nothing of his grand- of fried fish, a penny cup of broth made father in him that stately grandfather out of calves' and lambs' heads, tripes, who learned book-keeping by double entry hearts, &c., and spent the other penny in in a school at Hackney, having for his schoolfellow that young Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, whom the then Frank Rawdon succeeded years after in the governor-generalship of India. The only book the last of the marquises appears to have kept was the "book which bettors at races keep, and what came of it we all know.

bread. Thereupon, my lord and his noble dame would greatly dine; but there could not have been much left for the servant, if they were rash enough to have one, who might discover that the dinner was earned by work, and so look down upon their signorships with contempt.

In later days, and nearer home, pensions have been found as much a solace for insufficient income as rewards for past services.

The dukedom of Newcastle has fallen as the marquisate of Hastings. The peer who was duke from 1664 to 1676, in the Pensions for past services of peers were, title-page to his famous work on horse- no doubt, originally intended for those manship, refers to his power to make whose pecuniary means were small, and knights. After two centuries, the histori- who preferred an order on the Treasury cal family is, as it were, under the hoofs to an increase of dignity. Learned lords of horses with very ignoble riders on them. who leave the woolsack, and cannot deLords by courtesy appear to go in and out scend to the floor of the law courts, have of the Bankruptcy Court as if it were their lines cast in pleasant places, in the their club, and they seem quite as com- shape of a pension amounting to £5000 a fortable under the process. Peers, how-year each. As chancellors go out with a ever, whether they will or no, can now be made amenable to the same tribunal.

-re

ministry, there have been as many as four ex-chancellors dipping their hands into The Venetian nobility of the later years the public purse. Irish lord chancellors — of the Republic, and such Venetians as but they are not necessarily peers. claim to be noble still, are, for the most ceive abont £3700 a-year; the exact sum part, the descendants of those persons who is £8 short of that. Pensions have been happened to be electors in the year 1279. awarded to some peers in acknowledgment The right of voting was then confined to of their having been, during many years, less than five hundred individuals in the recipients of large annual sums of money six wards. Originally, every male of full for which they have rendered no service! age (twenty-one) possessed the right of The Earl of Ellenborough, who was once voting. Many of these nobles have fallen the nominal Chief Clerk of the Queen's to the condition of beggars; and formerly Bench —a sinecure office - had a compensuch noble mendicants had the privilege sation annuity awarded him, on the aboliof asking for alms under masks. Of course tion of the office, of nearly £8000 a-year. they might turn to trade or other work, 'The late Lord Avonmore, when he had to

or

surrender the registrarship of the Irish | America in the forecastle of a ship, workCourt of Chancery, received an annuity ing his way over; and that subsequently of £4199- and wanted the money. The-but not till after many vicissitudes and late Earl of Roden was, perhaps, less perils - he embarked at Boston under the needy, but he could very well employ the name of Charles Oswald. The Earl sailed annuity of £2698 which he gained by los- thence eastward in the American schooner ing the auditor-generalship of the Irish Hera, of which he was the chief officer. Exchequer. Many pensions are granted The Hera in course of time reached Hong for one life, others for two or three lives, Kong, but at that time the Earl and others, again, as long as legitimate Charles Oswald-was no longer on board. successors to the original grantee exist. The story she brought with her was to the More than £20,000 a year is still paid in effect that, shortly after she was out, the these so-called perpetual pensions. As ship was caught in a gale. It became long as there exists an Earl Amherst or necessary to take in the mainsail. While Nelson, a Lord Rodney, or a Viscount Ex- engaged in this task the chief mate and a mouth - or even a descendant of the seaman became caught in the tackle. A Duke of Schomberg - the perpetual pen-heavy lurch of the vessel hurled the former sion list will not be without a name ou it. Charles Oswald - into the sea. The Among the strangest cases of poor lords storm was so fearful, the sea so heavy, that are to be reckoned those who have volun- it was impossible to save the unfortunate tarily encountered poverty. In the person nobleman, who then and there perished. of the eldest son of the Earl of Lovelace Such is the story; but if a man should -the Countess was Byron's daughter Ada turn up in a dozen years, prove that he we have one of the most singular exam- was Oswald, the mate, rescued by some ples of a young lord submitting volunta- other means - that it had suited his hurily to poverty and painful toil. While hemour to wander about the world ever was Lord Ockham, and after he had come since, but that at last he intended to take to grief as a midshipman, he served as a to his own again - he might prove a very common sailor on board an American mer- unwelcome visitor to the waiters for the chant vessel. Subsequently he was a mere inheritance. He might, perhaps, cry, day-labourer in Mr. Scott Russell's ship-" Fortuna sequatur!" as he began the work, yard. He was in that capacity when, in 1860, he succeeded his grandmother Byron's widow-in the barony of Wentworth. In 1865 he died, poor, a labourer and a peer, but he never assumed the title belonging to his peerage. He was said to have left a widow in humble circumstances, but of good reputation. In 1863, however, his only brother laid claim to the barony of Wentworth, which claim was allowed by the House of Lords. In the course of the hearing of this claim it was distinctly stated that the Baron Wentworth who had toiled as a labourer in a shipyard had died unmarried.

Something not very unlike the above incident is connected with the Gordon family. It is not very certain where the Earl of Aberdeen is to be found, or in what capacity he is passing himself off. Impecunious Gordons have not been rare. There was a Lord Thomas Gordon who was a bankrupt in 1860 under the designation of a tobacconist. The Earl of Aberdeen to whom we now refer is, or was, the brother of the Hon. James Gordon who accidentally shot himself at Cambridge. The Earl was born in 1841, and he succeeded his father in 1864. He is said to have been of an adventurous and roving disposition; that he left England for

and seat himself comfortably at Haddo House, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, at the end of it.

Taking the question generally of hereditary gentleman turning adventurers vagobondizing over the world, courting poverty and peril, getting drowned at sea and coming up again after their death has long been a matter of congratulation to the next heir, and perhaps of the whole family- the law ought to prevent their cruel and imbecile vagaries. If a nobleman, as a matter of caprice, chooses to pass for dead during many years, and, after quietly allowing the natural heir to take possession of the inheritance, comes once more upon the stage and claims to act the first part again, it would be well if the law could prohibit the new assumption. A small annuity, paid quarterly, is the utmost that should be allowed to these eccentric humorists.

It is quite another thing with men of title whom poverty has driven abroad in the world, but whose industry has built up new wealth wherewith to gild the old title, if they choose to assume it. We may instance the case of the Norwich baronetcy as to this point. Sir William Norwich lost the Bampton estate by gambling. His brother and heir, John, became a pensioner