those notes? We shall agree very well together, once we get away from mischievous pettifoggers and greedy clerks."

Johnny followed unresisting; he could not resist the Colonel. He did not even say good-bye to his daughter, but went without a word.

Milly expected her father to return that day, and the next, and the day after. Then George went to the Langham and inquired. Mr. Brooke West was gone, and nothing was known of any Mr. Montoro. What happened was very simple. The Colonel drove his friend Johnny to Wapping, or the neighbourhood. There he gave him dinner, with copious whisky. He then found out a steamer going to sail to New York the next day. He persuaded Johnny, without the least difficulty, that his only chance was to get back to Oregon with all speed, lest somebody should take possession of his clearing, and that ten pounds, as an advance, would quite cover any claims he might have on account of that bundle of notes. He nursed Johnny all that day, keeping him happy with whisky and amused with continual talk. In the morning he took him on board, and did not leave him until the last bell rang and the last visitor had to descend the companion. In fact, he was the last; and as he went down, Johnny was feebly hanging over the bulwarks, waving his hat in a friendly farewell. Never was such a Johnny known.

I believe that he is now sitting by himself in the shade beside his cabin, listening contentedly to the murmur of the stream, and regarding through the door with sentimental admiration a distant view of the whisky-bottle on the table.

As for the Astronomer, it took him many days to recover even the semblance of dignity and self-respect. He was crushed; he did not dare to face the boys, who were reduced to mere rags of despair and wrath. Copernica took her father to the seaside at Walton-on-Naze, where he amused himself by considering the flatness of the ocean, and so gradually pulled round. He has now entirely recovered, because he has made converts of two ladies— sisters-with money. They are convinced that he is not only right and a very great Discoverer indeed, but also that he is mentioned in Prophecy, and will be connected with the end of the world. They talk of leaving him all their money for the purpose of disseminating the truth. He has begun a new chapter on the Flatness of the Earth, and has promised a Speculation on the Outer Rim. Sometimes, however, the healed wound breaks out afresh, and he remembers with shame and sorrow how he was cajoled and deceived, and how he was ready to part with the whole of his fortune to an unscrupulous adventurer and cheat.

I ought to leave the Colonel to his own devices. In novels he would have gone back to America, there to lose all his ill-gotten money on euchre and a black bottle; after this he would have

become once more adventurer, sportsman, and card-sharper; and he would have been finally hanged for horse-stealing, or shot for cheating at monty. I beg to explain that Mr. Percival Brooke West did nothing of the kind.

Johnny despatched, he sat down to think.

First of all, he had not done so badly since he had managed to get into his little gambling circle. The stolen eight hundred pounds had increased to more than a thousand, without deducting his personal expenses. And he felt that he could not possibly return to the old life. And then he remembered that he had a mother and sisters.

They lived by the seaside in a pretty cottage—a widow-woman and two elderly daughters. They are quite well-to-do people, and until the autumn of this year of grace, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, they lamented continually the absence of the son and brother who had turned out so badly, and been so "extravagant"that is how they put it; but though they knew nothing for certain, they were aware that there had been more than extravagance. One morning in September the prodigal came home.

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Mother," he said, "let us have no talk of the past. I have had time to sow my wild oats. I have saved, at the expense of many privations and great resolution, a small sum of money to come home with. Let me stay a little while with you and my sisters before I go back to the struggle." He had grown his grey beard again, looked quite gentle and humble, and spoke so kindly that their hearts were melted.

Let him stay? Will they ever let him go? And if a tiger be well fed, regularly fed, and kept warm, and given all that he wants, that tiger, in course of time, will become, if you please, a mere tame cat. He will undergo this transformation without any repentance, tears, remorse, sorrow, self-reproach, penitence, or lamentations of a sinner, but comfortably, gradually, and smoothly. In course of time, Mr. Percival Brooke West will, I dare say, inherit his mother's property. He will not return to town, where his late reception inspired him with a dislike for Clubland; but will remain in the country, and will become an authority on whist; he will be popular among many as he grows older, on account of his strange experiences and his varied stories of travel and adventure; and though in course of time there may come into the country rumours of wild youth and excesses, followed by trouble, no one will believe that he was ever anything but an honourable gentleman, with as fair a record as falls to the lot of most, though perhaps he lost his money, and had to go abroad for a time to make more.

But Milly and her husband abide by the banks of the gentle river Lea, and are contented, and he hopes to do such great things in the future as will lead him to the gate of honour and the way of wealth.

IN LUCK AT LAST.

I.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS.

IF everyone were allowed beforehand to choose and select for himself the most pleasant method of performing this earthly pilgrimage, there would be, I have always thought, an immediate run upon that way of getting to the Delectable Mountains which is known as the Craft and Mystery of Second-hand Bookselling. If, further, one were allowed to select and arrange the minor details such, for instance, as the character of the shop, it would seem desirable that the kind of bookselling should be neither too lofty nor too mean-that is to say, that one's ambition would not aspire to a great collector's establishment, such as one or two we might name in Piccadilly, the Haymarket, or New Bond Street: these should be left to those who greatly dare and are prepared to play the games of Speculation and of Patience; nor, on the other hand, would one choose an open cart at the beginning of the Whitechapel Road, or a shop in Seven Dials, whose stock-in-trade would consist wholly of three or four boxes outside the door filled with odd volumes at twopence apiece. As for "pitch" or situation, one would wish it to be somewhat retired, but not too much; one would not, for instance, willingly be thrown away in Hoxton, nor would one languish in the obscurity of Kentish Town; a secondhand bookseller must not be so far removed from the haunts of men as to place him practically beyond the reach of the collector; nor, on the other hand, should he be planted in a busy thoroughfare -the noise of many vehicles, the hurry of quick footsteps, the swift current of anxious humanity, are out of harmony with the atmosphere of a second-hand bookshop. Some suggestion of external repose is absolutely necessary; there must be some stillness in the air; yet the thing itself belongs essentially to the city; no one can imagine a second-hand bookshop beside green fields so that there should be some murmur and perceptible hum of mankind always present in the ear. Thus there are half-a-dozen

bookshops in King William Street, Strand, which seem to enjoy every possible advantage of position, for they are in the very heart of London, but yet are not exposed to the full noise and tumult of that overflowing tide which surges round Charing Cross. Again, there are streets north of Holborn and Oxford Street most pleasantly situated for the second-hand bookseller, and there are streets where he ought not to be, where he has no business, and where his presence jars. Could we, for instance, endure to see the shop of a second-hand bookseller established in Cheapside?

Perhaps, however, the most delightful spot in all London for a second-hand bookshop is that occupied by Emblem's in the King's Road, Chelsea,

It stands at the lower end of the road, where one begins to realize and thoroughly feel the influences of that ancient and lordly suburb. At this end of the road there are rows of houses with old-fashioned balconies; right and left of it there are streets which in the summer and early autumn are green, yellow, red, and golden with their masses of creepers; squares which look as if, with the people living in them, they must belong to the year eighteen hundred; neither a day before nor a day after; they lie open to the road, with their gardens full of trees. Cheyne Walk and the old church, with its red-brick tower, and the new Embankment, are all so close that they seem part and parcel of the King's Road. The great Hospital is within five minutes' walk, and sometimes the honest veterans themselves may be seen wandering in the road. The air is heavy with associations and memories. You can actually smell the fragrance of the new-made Chelsea buns, fresh from the oven, as they were baked just a hundred years ago. You may sit with dainty damsels, all hoops and furbelows, eating custards at the Bunhouse; you may wander among the rare plants of the Botanic Gardens. The old great houses rise, shadowy and magnificent, above the modern terraces; Don Saltero's Coffee-House yet opens its hospitable doors; Sir Thomas More meditates again on Cheyne Walk; at dead of night the ghosts of ancient minuet tunes may be heard from the Rotunda of Ranelagh Gardens, though the new barracks stand upon its site; and along the modern streets you may see the ladies with their hoop petticoats and the gentlemen with their wigs and their threecornered hats and swords, and you are not in the least astonished.

Emblem's is one of two or three shops which stand together, but it differs from its neighbours in many important particulars. For it has no plate-glass, as the others have; nor does it stand like them with open doors; nor does it flare away gas at night; nor is it bright with gilding and fresh paint ; nor does it seek to attract notice by posters and bills. On the contrary, it retains the old, small, and unpretending panes of glass which it has always had; in the evening it is dimly lighted, and it closes early; its door is always shut, and although the name over the shop is dingy, one

feels that a coat of paint, while it would certainly freshen up the place, would take something from its character. For a secondhand bookseller who respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded splendour, of worn paint and shabbiness. Within the shop, books line the walls and cumber the floor. There are an outer and an inner shop; in the former a small table stands among the books, at which Mr. James, the assistant, is always at work cataloguing, when he is not tying up parcels; sometimes even with gum and paste repairing the slighter ravages of time-foxed bindings and close-cut margins no man can repair. In the latter, which is Mr. Emblem's sanctum, there are chairs and a table, also covered with books, a writing-desk, a small safe, and a glass case, wherein are secured the more costly books in stock. Emblem's, as must be confessed, is no longer quite what it was in former days; twenty, thirty, or forty years ago that glass case was filled with precious treasures. In those days, if a man wanted a book of county history, or of genealogy, or of heraldry, he knew where was his best chance of finding it, for Emblem's in its prime and heyday, had its speciality. Other books treating on more frivolous subjects, such as science, belles lettres, Art, or politics, Emblem's would consider, buy, and sell again; but it took little pride in them. Collectors of county histories, however, and genealogy-hunters and their kind, knew that at Emblem's, where they would be most likely to get what they wanted, they would have to pay its market price for it.

There is no patience like the patience of a book-collector; there is no such industry given to any work comparable with the thoughtful and anxious industry with which he peruses the latest catalogues; there is no care like unto that which rends his mind before the day of auction or while he is still trying to pick up a bargain; there are no eyes so sharp as those which pry into the contents of a box full of old books, tumbled together, at sixpence a piece. The bookseller himself partakes of the noble enthusiasm of the collector; he is himself a collector, though he sells his collection; like the amateur, the professional moves heaven and earth to get a bargain; like him, he rejoices as much over a book which has been picked up below its price, as over a lost sheep which has returned into the fold. But Emblem is now old, and Emblem's shop is no longer what it was to the collector of the last generation. It was an afternoon in late September, and in this very year of grace, eighteen hundred and eighty-four. The day was as sunny and warm as any of the days of its predecessor Augustus the Gorgeous, but yet there was an autumnal feeling in the air which made itself felt even in the streets where there were no red and yellow Virginia creeper, no square gardens with long trails of mignonette and banks of flowering nasturtiums. In fact, you cannot anywhere escape the autumnal feeling which begins about the middle of September. It makes old people think with sadness that the