come home, and amusing himself with a minute's mystery? But it was neither; only a tall, lean, pale, more than solemn-faced man whom she had never seen before.

"Mrs. Reid?" asked he. She bowed.

'My name is Crowder," said he. And that was all that he appeared to intend to say. Mrs. Reid felt that she ought to have some sort of association with the name, but could not remember how, or when, or where. She had never taken the smallest heed of the details of Alan's engagement; and the name of his employer, if it had ever entered at one ear, had immediately gone out at the other. She could only wait for him to tell his business. But he remained dumb.

"I cannot remember "—she was obliged at last to begin―― "I represent the Spraggville Argus in this city," said he. And again he was dumb.

"The newspaper that my son-well-you have news of him? A letter-"

She stopped short. It was not Mr. Crowder's natural solemnity that startled her. She had never set eyes on the man before; and yet she was able to recognise a look in his eyes that she knew was not always in them, perhaps had never been in them before.

"He is ill?" she said suddenly. "Where can I find him ?—how soon can I reach him? What has happened?"

Still Mr. Crowder was dumb.

"What has happened to Alan?”

Mr. Crowder looked away. He was equal to facing most things, and believed himself capable of facing all. But, without any reason, Mrs. Reid was not the sort of woman whom he had come to tell what he had to tell. If he had come prepared with speech, it was gone; and for once he felt that the Argus was not the heart of the whole world. Was it even the whole of his own?

How (with those anxious eyes supplicating, nay, commanding news that might be borne) was he to say what he had come to say? His eyes could only fall before hers; and that told her all. He had come to break the news to her tenderly: he had left Mr. Sims in sole charge, that a stranger to him might not be startled by a certain double-leaded paragraph in the Argus which of course she read faithfully; and now he almost wished he had not come. He felt he had done a braver thing than if he had led a charge against a regiment of Prussian Grenadiers. And it was true.

"Alan is dead!" said she.

It was not a cry, but a most desolate moan.

For an instant, her

limbs seemed giving way under her, and he moved towards her. But she did not fall; she did not even seek to support herself; she stood straight and rigid, groping in the air with her hands as if she had been suddenly struck blind.

Even he, who did not know her, felt that she was battling hard for enough strength not to give way before a stranger. He had seen such things in his own Civil War. But then, in his own war, mothers and daughters and wives had enthusiasm, and the pride of giving up all things for the great Cause, to give them greater strength than their own-here, there was only the mother of an only son, dead for no cause greater than the pocket of the owner of the Argus, and with no strength but such as she could find in her own soul.

"How did he die?"

"Doing his duty," said Mr. Crowder almost in the telegraphic tone of his friend and enemy, Mr Sims. "He had entered Pahrus

It was his duty to go.

among the first, he and another American. You have read what went on after the siege; and I assure you the Argus is no more to blame for it than

Well! He and his

companion got mixed up with a crowd and a woman.

They got the

A man does

woman through, but- No; he couldn't have suffered. not feel in the skin when he is fighting hard with his blood well up; and a stab or a bullet, till it gets cold, is not so bad as a blow. And I conclude that a journalist, or any man who is killed for his journal or for his fellow-man, is as good as any soldier who is killed because he will be shot if he runs away. We are a Peace Journal. And those who die in the great cause of peace and progress are martyrs of whom their fellow-citizens will some day be as proud as the citizens of Spraggville are to-day." His style of speech did not sound the least strange. They were kind words, meant to give Alan's mother such strength and after-comfort as might come from knowing that her son was not only dead, but was praised and honoured for dying well. After that terrible first word, Mrs. Reid's brain felt wellnigh too numbed to feel. Even Mr. Crowder felt that she had far better have fallen in a dead swoon than be thus standing before him, rigid and hard-eyed like a woman of stone.

"I thank you," she said. "You say that Alan Reid died fighting against numbers for a woman, like a gentleman-he is a Hoel——"

"Like a Man-like a Man!" said Mr. Crowder sharply, alarmed at such signs of wandering wits, and trying to startle them back to their place again. "Is there anything that I can do for you? There must be many things—are you alone here? Of course not, though. Shall I communicate with our friend Gideon Skull ?"

If he had said with the Emperor of Tartary, it would have meant the same to her. Since Alan was dead, it was as likely as not that Gideon Skull, or anybody else, should be mentioned to her by Mr. Crowder.

"I thank you," she said again. leave me, I shall be much obliged.

now--"

"I am not alone. If you will Miss Reid will be home soon

He had to leave her there was a spasm about her lips while she spoke which showed that a strange presence was becoming more than she could bear. But, even when he was gone, she did not give way. She only went back to the sofa, and turned her face to the wall.

What must be done, must at times be done in haste, for fear lest the strength we have to do it should fail.

Alan's mother was not thinking of her daughter, God knows. If she had been-now-she would only have thought herself lost in another dream.

She would have seen the interior of a strange church, twice as large as that of Hillswick, nearly as worn out, and three times as dark and dusty-a wilderness of huge galleries and baize-lined pews, into which the sun, unsoftened by colour, seemed to stare sullenly and only because he was obliged. At the east end she would have seen a communion table fenced in by thick wooden railings like dwarfed bed-posts; and, flanked on the right by a well-dressed young gentleman and on the left by a clerk and a pew-opener, she would have seen, standing before a surpliced clergyman, Gideon Skull and Helen. It might have seemed natural to her-in a dream. She would have seen the giving of the ring that was to transform Alan Reid of Copleston into the brother of Gideon Skull.

Helen and her husband parted at the church door. She was certain she had done what was right, and indeed it was needful for her to be certain, henceforth and for ever. The door for compunction and regret had been closed for her—she could fancy, without the help of her own hands. She had certainly driven an excellent bargain; for so long as she allowed him to be her husband, Gideon had been perfectly ready to give way to her in all things, even in what he must have thought her idlest whims. Not only had he been made clearly to understand that it was for her brother's sake alone that she had brought herself to allow him to marry her-she was not even to be asked to leave her mother until she pleased; and her dread of having to make her confession met with such complete sympathy and acquiescence from Gideon, that she had resolved to put it off until

to-morrow. It did seem strange to her that doing right should always seem so hard—first the doing and then the telling. Well it was all for Alan, and her mother would understand.

So-half wondering that she felt in no wise stronger or better than half an hour ago-she first kept Gideon to his promise by bidding him good-bye till at least to-morrow, and, as soon as she could, got rid of Lord Ovoca, who had been Gideon's best man, and who insisted on seeing the bride at least part of the way home. The young man never saw anything odd in anything that was out of the common; his own life ran so much out of the groove, that he had no surprise left for any but common ways. The secret marriage, and the parting at the church door, must needs be right, because they tasted in his mouth like sawdust flavoured with orange-peel. He was rather obtrusive in his attentions to Helen, but his brogue and his general easiness of going always saved him from offending anybody; but even he was made to feel at last that the bride wanted to be left alone on her wedding-day. His chief reflection on the whole matter was, "Fancy the feelings of a girl who's had a decent name of her own when she hears herself called for the first time-Mrs. Gideon Skull !" But neither to-day nor to-morrow-that day which never comes ! -was Helen to tell her mother her new name. By the time she reached home, her mother had died, without moving from where she had lain down.

CHAPTER XXII.

I read it in a strange old book,
When hours were long and sunny,

How some one from a Fairy took
A purse for making money.
No more than half a pair of shakes
Would bid a bag of leather

Snow down, like Mother Carey's flakes,
Ten thousand pounds together.

How oft I wish, nor wonder why,

That fairies still were common,

Nor bade each girl and boy Good-bye
Who turns to man or woman!

For, just as clearly as I see

The cock on parish steeple,

I know they'd give that purse to me,
And not to common people.

MR. DEMETRIUS ARISTIDES, who represented the respectable side of his firm, lived at Bayswater in very good style, and, out of business

hours, held very little social communication with his junior partner, Mr. Sinon. Many people, judging by the very different view of their house presented by the two partners, both in business and society, mistook it for two different houses, whereas it was in reality entirely the same, and scarcely differed from a hundred others in having two different doors. Mr. Sinon, his partner himself felt compelled to confess, was far too much of a roué and a gambler for a merchant of the City of London. On the other hand, Mr. Sinon was exceedingly fond, behind his partner's back, of girding at him as a pedant, a miser, and a humbug, who, though born in the Levant, was no better than a common Englishman. Mr. Sinon seemed to throw away, with both hands, all the profits that Mr. Aristides made. But one advantage they had, which presumably worked well. The foes of one were the natural friends of the other, so that either partner could afford to lose a personal friend without necessarily costing the firm a client or customer. And then, their divergence of character enabled them to carry on many very opposite forms of business which greater harmony of nature must have made impossible. In short, Mr. Sinon was the sharp, dashing, bachelor partner; Mr. Aristides the honest, respectable, domestic one. And they were of perfect accord in considering each other indispensable. They were seldom seen together, even at their joint office in the City, and Mr. Sinon did not pay his partner's family more than one visit a year— that is to say, when he brought Madame Aristides an offering of sugar-plums on Old New Year's day. But they had never been known to have a dispute, except very publicly indeed, and when it was a matter of policy as well as of temper to hurl at one another those magnificently resonant epithets of Eastern Greece which are to our noisiest Billingsgate what thundering rocks are to clattering pebbles. And they never bore malice, but forgave one another instantly as soon as they were alone.

Mr. Demetrius Aristides was really, and without the faintest tinge of sarcasm at the expense of a most respectable word, a highly respectable man. He was even a good Christian, of the orthodox Levantine school, and hated Jews like poison. So orthodox was he, that this was the second, if not the very first, article in his creed. He felt it his duty to attack them in business at every turn, and almost always came off the winner. He was a cosmopolitan steeped in national prejudices. Thus he objected to Scotchmen, on principle, because it wastes time and ruins temper to deal with people who will consider, one by one, every one of the four hundred thousand sixpences in ten thousand pounds. He was cynically indifferent to