crest, nor the glittering steel ornaments on the neat harness, nor any of the exquisitely finished appointments of the light vehicle, provoked one word of criticism from Mr. Conyers. He mounted as easily as his lame leg would allow him, and taking the reins from the Softy, lighted his cigar preparatory to starting.

"You needn't sit up for me to-night," he said, as he drove into the dusty high road; "I shall be late."

Mr. Hargraves shut the iron gates with a loud clanking noise upon his new master.

"But I shall, though," he muttered, looking askant through the hars at the fast-disappearing Newport Pagnell, which was now little more than a black spot in a white cloud of dust; "but I shall sit up, though. You'll come home drunk, I lay." (Yorkshire is so preeminently a horseracing and betting county, that even simple country folk who have never wagered a sixpence in the quiet course of their lives say "I lay" where a Londoner would say "I dare say.") "You'll come home drunk, I lay; folks generally do from Doncaster; and I shall hear some more of your wild talk. Yes, yes," he said in a slow, reflective tone; "it's very wild talk, and I can't make top nor tail of it yet-not yet; but it seems to me somehow as if I knew what it all meant, only I can't put it together-I can't put it together. There's something missin', and the want of that something hinders me putting it together."

He rubbed his stubble of coarse red hair with his two strong, awkward hands, as if he would fain have rubbed some wanting intelligence into his head.

"Two thousand pound," he said, walking slowly back to the cottage. "Two thousand pound. It's a power of money. Why it's two thousand pound that the winner gets by the great race at Newmarket, and there's all the gentlefolks ready to give their ears for it. There's great lords fighting and struggling against each other for it; so it's no wonder a poor fond chap like me thinks summat about it."

He sat down upon the step of the lodge-door to smoke the cigar-ends which his benefactor had thrown him in the course of the day; but he still ruminated upon this subject, and he still stopped sometimes, between the extinction of one cheroot-stump and the illuminating of another, to mutter, "Two thousand pound. Twenty hundred pound. Forty times fifty pound," with an unctious chuckle after the enunciation of each figure, as if it was some privilege even to be able to talk of such vast sums of money. So might some doting lover, in the absence of his idol, murmur the beloved name to the summer breeze.

The last crimson lights upon the patches of blue water died out beneath the gathering darkness; but the Softy sat, still smoking, and still ruminating, till the stars were high in the purple vault above his head. A little after ten o'clock he heard the rattling of wheels and the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the high road, and going to the gate he looked out through the iron bars. As the vehicle dashed by the north gates he saw

that it was one of the Mellish-Park carriages which had been sent to the station to meet John and his wife.

"A short visit to Loon'on," he muttered. "I lay she's been to fetch the brass."

The greedy eyes of the half-witted groom peered through the iron bars at the passing carriage, as if he would have fain looked through its opaque pannels in search of that which he had denominated "the brass." He had a vague idea that two thousand pounds would be a great bulk of money, and that Aurora would carry it in a chest or a bundle that might be perceptible through the carriage-window.

"I'll lay she's been to fetch t' brass," he repeated, as he crept back to the lodge-door.

He resumed his seat upon the door-step, his cigar-ends, and his reverie, rubbing his head very often, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with both, but always as if he were trying to rub some wanting sense or power of perception into his wretched brains. Sometimes he gave a short restless sigh, as if he had been trying all this time to guess some difficult enigma, and was on the point of giving it up.

It was long after midnight when Mr. James Conyers returned, very much the worse for brandy-and-water and dust. He tumbled over the Softy, still sitting on the step of the open door, and then cursed Mr. Hargraves for being in the way.

"B't s'nc' y' h'v' ch's'n t's't 'p," said the trainer, speaking a language entirely composed of consonants, "y' m'y dr'v' tr'p b'ck t' st'bl's."

By which rather obscure speech he gave the Softy to understand that he was to take the dog-cart back to Mr. Mellish's stable-yard.

Steeve Hargraves did his drunken master's bidding, and leading the horse homewards through the quiet night found a cross boy with a lantern in his hand waiting at the gate of the stable-yard, and by no means disposed for conversation, except, indeed, to the extent of the one remark that he, the cross boy, hoped the new trainer wasn't going to be up to this game every night, and hoped the mare, which had been bred for a racer, hadn't been ill used.

All John Mellish's horses seemed to have been bred for racers, and to have dropped gradually from prospective winners of the Derby, Oaks, Chester Cup, Great Ebor, Yorkshire Stakes, Leger, and Doncaster Cup, -to say nothing of minor victories in the way of Northumberland Plates, Liverpool Autumn Cups, and Curragh Handicaps, through every variety of failure and defeat,-into the every-day ignominy of harness. Even the van which carried groceries was drawn by a slim-legged, narrow-chested, high-shouldered animal, called the "Yorkshire Childers," and bought, in its sunny colt-hood, at a great price by poor John.

Mr. Conyers was snoring aloud in his little bedroom when Steeve Hargraves returned to the lodge. The Softy stared wonderingly at the handsome face brutalised by drink, and the classical head flung back upon the crumpled pillow in one of those wretched positions which intoxi

cation always chooses for its repose. Steeve Hargraves rubbed his head harder even than before, as he looked at the perfect profile, the red, halfparted lips, the dark fringe of lashes on the faintly crimson-tinted cheeks.

"Perhaps I might have been good for summat if I'd been like you," he said, with a half-savage melancholy. "I shouldn't have been ashamed of myself then. I shouldn't have crept into dark corners to hide myself, and think why I wasn't like other people, and what a bitter, cruel shame it was that I wasn't like 'em. You've no call to hide yourself from other folks; nobody tells you to get out of the way for an ugly hound, as you told me this morning, hang you. The world's smooth enough for you."

So may Caliban have looked at Prospero with envy and hate in his heart before going to his obnoxious tasks of dish-washing and trencherscraping.

He shook his fist at the unconscious sleeper as he finished speaking, and then stooped to pick up the trainer's dusty clothes, which were scattered upon the floor.

"I suppose I'm to brush these before I go to bed," he muttered, "that my lord may have 'em ready when he wakes in th' morning."

He took the clothes on his arm and the light in his hand, and went down to the lower room, where he found a brush and set to work sturdily, enveloping himself in a cloud of dust, like some ugly Arabian génie who was going to transform himself into a handsome prince.

He stopped suddenly in his brushing by and by, and crumpled the waistcoat in his hand.

"There's some paper," he exclaimed. stuff and linin"."

"A paper

sewed up between

He omitted the definite article before each of the substantives, as is a common habit with his countrymen when at all excited.

"A bit o' paper," he repeated, "between stuff and linin'. I'll rip t' waistcoat open and see what 'tis."

He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, carefully unripped a part of one of the seams in the waistcoat, and extracted a piece of paper folded double, a decent-sized square of rather thick paper, partly printed, partly written.

He leaned over the light with his elbows on the table, and read the contents of this paper, slowly and laboriously, following every word with his thick forefinger, sometimes stopping a long time upon one syllable, sometimes trying back half a line or so, but always plodding patiently with his ugly forefinger.

When he came to the last word, he burst suddenly into a loud chuckle, as if he had just succeeded in guessing that difficult enigma which had puzzled him all the evening.

"I can put it all together now. His I can put it all together, and make to give him the two thousand pound

"I know it all now," he said. “ words; and hers; and the money. out the meaning of it. She's going to go away from here and say nothing about this."

He refolded the paper, replaced it carefully in its hiding-place between the stuff and lining of the waistcoat, then searched in his capacious pocket for a fat leathern book, in which, amongst all sorts of odds and ends, there were some needles and a tangled skein of black thread. Then, stooping over the light, he slowly sewed up the seam which he had ripped open,— dexterously and neatly enough, in spite of the clumsiness of his big fingers.

Gladys the Lost.

I.

GLADYS, my sweet, I have wander'd far
From where your western mountains are,
Far under soft Italian skies,
Dreaming ever of your calm eyes.

Oh, the perfumed breath of the new-mown hay
On that last day,

When the fluttering fern-leaves kissed your feet,
Gladys, my sweet!

II.

Gladys, my sweet, you were innocent ther
Merry maid of the mountain-glen;
No passionate blush had stained the snows
Deep in the heart of my wild white rose.
I heard your low voice call to me

Across the sea:

With a dream of trouble my steps grew fleet,
Gladys, my sweet!

III.

Gladys, my sweet, by your cottage-door
There are swathes of scented hay once more:
But you are wandering-who knows where?—
A wan wild face under drenched black hair.
With terror I search 'neath midnight skies
For altered eyes.

Is it your ghost that I dread to meet,

Gladys, my sweet?

MORTIMER COLLINS.

The Metamorphoses of Matter.

So far as the discoveries of chemistry have hitherto gone, the elementary bodies of terrestrial creation, and probably of the entire universe, are no more than about 66.*

Considering the immense diversity of material things within our cognisance, the existence of a far greater number of material elements would have seemed probable; and feelings of surprise rise to their culminating point when individuals not versed in chemistry are informed that even of the 66 elementary bodies known, Nature-somewhat fantastically as it might seem-has decreed that nearly two-thirds of the materials of the earth's accessible crust should be made up of two elements alone, these being oxygen and silicon. Nor is the surprise thus begotten likely to be diminished by the assurance that chemical analysis of animal and vegetable beings demonstrates the fact, that the main elements-the bulk of their composition are only four: viz. hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. Belief in the immutability of chemical elements may be regarded as the axiomatic basis of modern chemistry, as distinguished from ancient and medieval alchemy; nevertheless, within the last quarter of a century, some curious revelations have been made that seem almost at variance with the dogma. Of these a very cursory notice must on this occasion suffice; seeing that the scheme and tendencies of this paper lead us in another direction. Perhaps the best popular illustration of the mutation of aspect and qualities of which an element may be susceptible without combination, is that afforded by the element phosphorus. In the year 1849, Professor Schrötter of Vienna astonished the chemical section of the British Association, holding its séance at Birmingham, by the substance he called "amorphous" or "allotropic" phosphorus: a substance that, though wholly different from common phosphorus in appearance and many qualities, may nevertheless be transformed into ordinary phosphorus by mere elevation of temperature; a substance which, torture it, analyse it as you will, reveals the presence of no second element. It is phosphorus under another form, but nevertheless phosphorus. To present some illustrations of the points of distinction between ordinary and allotropic phosphorus, consider well the following:-Ordinary phosphorus is a body so highly inflammable that it must be stored away in water; allotropic phosphorus is so devoid of inflammability at the temperature of the human body, that the Viennese chemist produced a specimen of it out of his waistcoat-pocket. Ordinary phosphorus is light yellow in colour, and of the consistence of bees'-wax; allotropic phosphorus is puce-coloured, and, when not in powder, very hard. Ordinary phosphorus is readily soluble in bisulphide of carbon: when thus in solution constituting the liquid denominated by Captains Disney and Norton "liquid fire;" whereas

* The number is not exactly determined.