"Easily: I know a shop where they sell all those kind of things, and could pick you up almost any thing you wanted."

"I would like a countryman's dress, for it would excite least attention down in the part we are going to. But we'll talk more about the matter in the morning. What's your name, friend?"

"Dick Bayles is my real name; but I get Black Dick generally, I'm so very black," and he laughed. "That's an ugly scar you've got on your cheek."

Rudd winced, and said in a tone of concentrated rage, "Yes, I got that in a hand-to-hand fight with a foster-brother of mine, called Dalton. I was as pretty a man of my inches as you could see before that

"But you paid him off for it, didn't you?" demanded Bayles, eagerly.

"I will do so one of these days, I hope," rejoined the other, savagely: "yes, I promise him, when next we meet, that I shall have a reckoning for that and a few more injuries besides."

"Do you know where he is now?" inquired Bayles, as he leisurely undressed himself, whilst Rudd sat on his bed, apparently determined to save himself the trouble of such an act. "In Paris."

"Bosh! that's a long way off, pal."

"It is I was going there with the boy, but now it's useless." "Then why not search for the lad: he can't have run far already, one would think."

Rudd foamed at the mouth with baffled rage. "It is too late now," he said, in a tone of despair.

"Had you been long in company with the rascal ?"

"Only two or three days. From the first I mistrusted him, he was such a white-livered rascal, and showed such a sneaking kindness for the whelp. As long as I kept possession of the brat, I punished twenty people that I hated with all my heart. There was Dalton, and his brother, a man that was left guardian to him, and—but no matter! he has escaped from my clutches; but woe be to him if he ever falls into them again!"

He then drew the bed-clothes about him, and presently pretended to be fast asleep. His companion was some time in undressing, and even after he had extinguished the candle, sat for half-an-hour or more on the stock of his bed, revolving in his mind all that his new associate had told him. At length, he aroused himself, and crept stealthily into bed, and was soon aslcep.

His

Rudd moaned and muttered repeatedly during his sleep, which was evidently disturbed by some painful dreams. companion, however, did not awake, for he was a very heavy

sleeper, and when once fairly unconscious, it required no slight disturbance to arouse him. Towards morning Rudd awoke, with the perspiration streaming from every pore, although the night was chilly. His dreams had appalled even his stout heart, and for several minutes he vainly strove to remember where he was. At length, recollection returned. He sat up in bed, and listened to the calm, regular breathing of his companion.

"He must only be a new hand, or he could not sleep so soundly as that," he thought, as his mind recurred to his own fearful visions, from which he was just aroused; and then he threw himself back again upon the bed, and, closing his eyes, attempted to sleep again.

When his new confederate awoke, he was up and dressed.

"Hallo! there, you make an early start, my good fellow," was Bayles's good-humoured salutation, as he began to dress himself. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long," rejoined the other, sullenly. "I didn't rest well, and so got up, and put on my clothes: as soon as we have had some breakfast, we will go to this shop you were speaking about, and choose a disguise."

"Ay, for you, if you like: I fancy I'm not well enough known down in the parts we're going to, to need one."

"All the better, if you are not; I wish I could say as much; however, if we only get something that will suit at the shop, I defy the devil himself to recognise me. You're a slow dresser,

Bayles."

"Why, yes, I am rather: it's a bit of my nature, I think," said the other, laughing.

Rudd did not reply, but began to pace the room with hasty strides, for he was beginning to get impatient; fortunately for Mr. Bayles, the latter soon completed his toilet, and then led the way down stairs to a little dark den, in which breakfast was already prepared for two.

Coarse bread, broiled red herrings, and tea, were the staple of the meal. The close, confined, dingy hole, for you could not call it a room, reeked with the mingled smell of stale tobacco and the coarse rankness of the fish: the two men ate like famished wolves, and were waited upon by the sluttish Hebe who had brought them the liquor on the previous night.

"There was a man drowned last night, Bayles, on the Hard," she said in a cold, callous tone, as she brought in a reinforcement of the herrings. "They're going to sit upon him in an hour or so."

"A man! what kind of a man, Jess?" inquired Bayles, carelessly, as he swallowed his tea.

"Oh, how should I know! they were carrying the corpse up stairs, abit ago; it quite gave me a turn."

"You're such a feeling hussey, Jess," rejoined the man, with a sneering laugh. "There hasn't been any foul play, has there ?"

"I know nothing but what I've told you," retorted the woman, with a toss of her slovenly head. "They've laid it on the table up stairs in the billiard room till the jury comes, and you can go and look for yourself if you are curious."

"Pshaw! I hate dead bodies," growled Bayles, with a look of ineffable disgust.

"I should like to see it," interposed Rudd, for the first time looking up; "I like to see dead bodies."

Bayles involuntarily retreated from him as he said this.

"I like to see how men have died," continued Rudd, speaking in a quick, excited voice. "One man goes out of the world as calmly as if he would waken again to-morrow morning, instead of having to lie and fester in some noisome grave; another takes his last look of life like the sun in a tempest, with every feature distorted by a thousand horrible passions."

"Suppose we go up and see this body-that is, you may; as I will stay outside, until you have seen all you wish-Come!" "With all my heart!" rejoined Rudd, carelessly; "let us pay the reckoning first, and then we needn't return!" and he rang the bell.

The bill was not a heavy one, and Rudd immediately discharged it; the woman looked hard at the sovereign he gave her, but its ring was true and sound; and she changed it without hesitation.

"You aren't a smasher, I hope ?" she said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"No, no, mother!" retorted the man, with a smile. "Come, let's have a kiss, for luck!"

"Get away with you, you impudent dog!—you ought to be ashamed to put on a poor lone woman in such a way!" was her response.

Rudd got the kiss, and gave her a hug into the bargain, that might have squeezed the breath out of a bear, and then followed Bayles into the passage. As they gained the first landing on the staircase, the latter drew up, and in a whisper demanded

"What, in the name of all that's fortunate, induced you to kiss old, drunken, mother Punshon, in that way? surely, your taste doesn't run on such cattle as that?"

Why, you see, she asked me a very difficult question; and the only way to get out of the scrape was, to flatter her vanity

a bit," rejoined Rudd, with a laugh. "I saw she rather fancied me, last night, and so the thought saved me."

"Why, wasn't the sovereign good?" inquired Bayles, preparing to ascend again.

"May be, and may be not," rejoined Rudd, carelessly; "how should a man know all that passes through his hands? the money's hard enough to get, to make it too keenly scrutinised when it does come."

"Now, this is the room!" interposed Bayles, throwing open the door of a long, low room, which opened out upon the sea. "You won't be long, I fancy ?" and so saying, he sate down upon a bench in the passage, and began to whistle a quick step.

Rudd cast a hurried glance round the room as he advanced into it, and his eye took in, in a moment, the dirty walls and dingy ceiling, the naked benches and billiard-tables, on which the cues were still lying. A torn number of "Bell's Life" lay on the floor, near a spittoon, around which a quantity of broken tobacco-pipes were thrown; a shattered chair or two lay in another corner, as if some drunken squabble had taken place there the night before, contrasting still more strongly with the presence of the corpse.

On a table, in the centre of the room, lay something covered with a dingy yellow sheet. Rudd felt his flesh creep, in spite of all his hardihood, as he found himself so abruptly placed in the companionship of death; but, with a heavy step, he approached, and drew aside the sheet.

He involuntarily started, and drew back. Rigid, and pale, and fixed as those features were, he recognized them only too readily. By some strange accident, they had brought the body of poor Hemp to the very house from which he had fled the previous night, and the man he had attempted to murder now stood over his own senseless corpse; a tide of revengeful feelings swept over the lawless heart of his antagonist, as he once more drew the sheet over the lifeless form, still reeking from its fatal plunge; and, with a fixed and impenetrab.e look, he turned from the room, and rejoined his companion.

"Some poor fellow, that has been sick of the world," he said, carelessly, as he strode down stairs; "he makes a pretty corpse enough, too, poor wretch !"

"Did you ever see him before?" demanded Bayles, perfectly unconscious of the connexion there had been between the two men. "It wasn't the villain that attempted to throttle you, last night, was it?"

Rudd darted a keen, inquisitive look at his new ally, for a moment, as if he felt that the latter had suspected who the

dead man really was; but Bayles looked so unconscious, that he felt re-assured, and only answered, coldly,

"I never saw the man before, to my knowledge."

They were already at the door. Bayles looked up and down. the street for a moment, in a peculiar manner; then darted rapidly across, closely followed by Rudd, who was as fleet of foot, and almost as stealthy, as a greyhound. Bayles then plunged into the first narrow alley they came to, and ran rapidly forward, with his head ducked down, until they had placed mother Punshon's a good quarter of a mile behind them, and then relaxing his pace, suffered Rudd to overtake him.

"Walk quietly, now, for a bit, and we will soon be there," he said, in a low tone, and he fell into a lounging walk, which Rudd imitated to the letter.

After threading innumerable lanes, each a dirty facsimile of its predecessor, they stopped, at last, at a house, from the broken and dilapidated windows of which dangled various articles of wearing attire.

"What disguise do you mean to assume?" inquired Bayles, pausing on the threshold.

"Oh, a sailor will suit me famously," rejoined his companion, with a gruff laugh; "only lead on, and let us get out of this place as quick as we can."

Bayles complied, and presently ushered him into a very spacious but very low apartment, dimly lit with two narrow windows, through the half-glazed casements of which the light fought its way; a few disreputable looking people, thieves that had plundered sick men's deathbeds, or had pilfered from hedgerows and out-houses the property of the honest and the unwary, were chaffering over a pile of dirty clothes, with the owner and his people, who drove quite as hard a bargain as the best of

the ".

"We want some kind of an outfit, master," said Bayles, who had kept in the background until the proprietor of the establishment was at liberty.

“In what style, my man?" demanded the latter, eyeing the two men from head to foot as he stood opposite to them. "We have all sorts; honest mechanics, struggling tradesmen, tailors, sailors, ruined peasants jockies; the tradesman or the peasant is the most popular, and brings-of course the best price," he added, with a coarse laugh.

"I am afraid neither of us would suit the character," rejoined Bayles, echoing his laugh.

Why, no, you both look too much like kempen coves for that, my bullies," was the response-"this gentleman," tapping