and grandmother. They were out for the day, by permission of the Master; in fact, they now wore the beautiful and tasteful uniform of the St. Luke's Workhouse. Nobody could look more venerable, more virtuous, or more hardly used by Fortune than this pair. It seemed to passers-by as if they must have spent their all in good works and acts of charity, which accounted for their condition of truly honourable poverty, so creamy-white was the old man's hair, so serene the old woman's countenance.

Mr. Bradberry stopped in front of them and snorted. "As for Julia, now- " he began.

"Oh, the wicked and ungrateful hussy!" said the grandmother. "Oh! to go away and leave her old grand

"As for Julia," he repeated, interrupting, "I believe she's dying. I thought I'd tell you; not that I am going to let you see her or trouble her last days, poor thing. She's got no money for you; but I tell you what I'll do. Yes; you used to get drunk once a week, at least, out of her money. Well, Julia shall give you one more chance. There—go along with you and drink it up; it's the last you'll have." He handed them two or three shillings, which the old woman snatched; and then the pair walked on in silence, and Mr. Bradberry stood with his hands in his pockets looking after them. "Poor girl!" he murmured; "she never had a fair chance. Oh! nobody ought to be poor!"

At eight o'clock one Monday morning Jem was liberated. Coming out of prison, I am given to understand, is even worse than going in, for such offenders as this young man. When he

passed through the accursed gates, and stood in the street a free man again, his cheek reddened with the shame which he had hardly felt in the cell, and his heart fell low as lead, and his eyes swam so that he saw nothing. Then some one touched him on the arm, and he recovered and turned his head.

It was his mother. Jem groaned, and shrank back with a look of horror.

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"You ?" he cried, shaking her off with a gesture which she will never forget. "You, who put me in there and disgraced me for life? You come to see my shame ?"

"I am here," she replied, "to know how it goes with your soul. Have you repented ?"

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Repented!"

"The man Bradberry came to me last night," she went on coldly. "He tells me that the woman-your former companion-has been struck down by Heaven in her iniquities-her cup being full-and is now dying. He accused me of causing her death—but that is nothing. Save once when I told her plain truth about herself, I have not meddled with her. Go to her therefore, and, if possible, repent together."

He listened no longer, but rushed away. I think that he will never see his mother any more.

He thought nothing of Julia's wasted face and weakness and vanished beauty. As soon as she lifted her great eyes wistfully when he opened the door, the old love came back to him—but it had never left him-with a yearning tenderness, and a bitterness of self-reproach he had never felt in the prison. He threw himself on his knees before her, and caught her hands. "Oh! Julia! Julia!" he cried, "forgive me. It is I who have brought this suffering upon you. I did not know, indeed I didn't. I thought my accounts were square-I did indeed-and my mother would not give me my own money. Oh! Julia!" He burst into such tears and weeping as went to her very heart.

"No, Jem," she said, weeping with him, "you mustn't cry. It was my fault. Everybody says it was my fault. The magistrate said so. Forgive me and go away. You mustn't keep bad company any more. But I didn't know. I didn't mean to be bad company for you. I loved you too much to harm you, Jem. Don't think I meant it. Oh! Jem, you were kind to me!"

He swore, kissing her and weeping again, that he would never leave her any more. Her cough should go away. She should get strong again. But she shook her head.

'No, Jem," she said, "I am going to die. The doctor says I shall die very soon. He told Mr. Bradberry so. And oh, Jem! there's never been an hour but I've been with you in your prison. Even at night I seemed to sit with you and hear your poor heart beat. Poor Jem! Don't take on. Oh! don't take on, Jem, about me. There's many and many better than me in the world --not theatre girls, you know—girls your mother will like. Don't mind me. Mr. Bradberry says it doesn't hurt to die. And perhaps, he says he doesn't know, but perhaps there'll be flowers and hedges like Muswell Hill."'

Yes," said Jem.

bound to be."

"Yes; there's bound to be, Julia. There's

Stay with me, Jem. Oh! I am so glad to get you back again! Stay with me, Jem, won't you? Stay with me.

away, will you? Oh! Jem, you are kind to me!"

You won't go

SIR JOCELYN'S CAP.*

I.

"THIS," said Jocelyn, throwing himself into a chair, "is the most wonderful thing I ever came across."

Do you know how, sometimes in the dead of night, or even in broad daylight, while you are thinking, you distinctly hear a voice which argues with you, puts the case another way, contradicts you, or even accuses you, and calls names?

This happened to Jocelyn. A voice somewhere in the room, and not far from his ear, said clearly and distinctly, "There is something here much more wonderful." It was a low voice, yet metallic, and with a cluck in it as if the owner had begun life as a Hottentot.

Jocelyn started and looked around. He was quite alone. He was in chambers in Piccadilly: a suite of four rooms; outside there was the roll of carriages and cabs, with the trampling of many feet; at five o'clock on an afternoon in May, and in Piccadilly, one hardly expects anything supernatural. When something of the kind happens at this time, it is much more creepy than the same thing at midnight. The voice was perfectly distinct and audible. Jocelyn felt cold and trembled involuntarily, and then was angry with himself for trembling.

"Much more wonderful," repeated this strange voice with the cluck. Jocelyn pretended not to hear it. He was quite as brave as most of his brother-clerks in the Foreign Office, but in the matter

*It is due to Mr. Charles Brookfield to state that the idea of this story is entirely his. He suggested it one day at the Savile Club to Mr. Walter Pollock and myself, and we amused ourselves for an hour or two in devising sundry situations which might result from the zeal of a demon grown incapable by age and infirmity of fully carrying out his master's wishes. Most of these situations are embodied in the following pages, which were afterwards written by Mr. Pollock and myself. I have to thank Mr. Pollock for his kind permission to include the sketch in this volume.

of strange voices he was inexperienced, and thought to get rid of this one as one gets rid of an importunate beggar, by passing him without notice.

"I've looked everywhere," he said.

"Not everywhere," clucked the voice in correction.

"Everywhere," he repeated, firmly. "And there's nothing. The old man has left no money, no bank-books, no sign of investment, stocks, or shares. What did he live upon ?"

"Me," said the voice.

Jocelyn started again. His nerves, he said to himself, must be getting shaky.

"He seems to have had no affairs' of any kind; no solicitors, no engagements; nothing but the letting of the Grange. How on earth did he-" Here he stopped, for fear of being answered by that extraordinary echo in his ear. He heard a cluck-cluck as if the reply was ready, but was checked at the moment of utterance.

"All his bills paid regularly, nothing owing, not even a tailor's bill running, and the money in his desk exactly the amount, and no more, required for his funeral. Fancy leaving just enough for your funeral! Seems like a practical joke on your lawful heir. Nothing in the world except that old barn." He sat down again

and meditated.

The deceased was his uncle, the chief of the old house, the owner and possessor of the Grange. He left, it is true, a formal will behind him, in which he devised everything of which he was possessed to his nephew Jocelyn, who inherited the Grange and the park besides the title. Unfortunately, he did not specify his possessions, so that when the young man came to look into his inheritance, he knew not how great or how small it was. Now, when one knows nothing, one expects a great deal, which accounts for the buoyancy of human youth and the high spirits of the infant pig.

He began with an unsystematic yet anxious examination of the old man's desks and papers. They were left in very good order the letters, none of which were of the least importance, were all folded, endorsed, and dated; the receipts-all for bills which would never be disputed-were pasted in books; the diaries, which contained the record of daily expenditure and the chronicle of small-beer, stood before him in a long uniform row of black cloth volumes. Even the dinner-cards were preserved, and the play-bills a most methodical old gentleman. But this made it the more surprising that there could not be found among all these papers any which referred to his private affairs and his personal property.

"He must have placed," said Jocelyn, "all the documents concerning his invested moneys in the hands of some solicitor. I have only got to find his address."

He then proceeded to examine slowly and methodically the

drawers, shelves, cupboards, recesses, cabinets, boxes, cases, receptacles, trunks, and portmanteaus in the chambers, turning them inside out and upside down, shaking them, banging them, peering and prying, carefully feeling the linings, lifting lids, sounding pockets, and trying locks, until he was quite satisfied that he had left no place untried. Yet he found nothing. This was surprising as well as disappointing. For although of late years old Sir Jocelyn's habits had been retired and even penurious, it was well known that in early manhood, that is to say, somewhere in the twenties and the thirties, he was about town in a very large and generous sense indeed. He must, at that time, have had a great deal of money. Had he lost it? Yet something must have remained. Else, how could he live? And at least there must be some record of the remnant. Yet, strange to say, not even a bankbook. Jocelyn thought over this day by day. He had taken up his abode in the chambers, which were comfortable, though the furniture was old and shabby. The rent, which was high, was paid by the Grange, now let to a family of Americans of the same surname as his own, who wanted to say they had lived in an old English country-house, and would go home and declare that it was the real original cradle of their race. Cradles of race, like family trees, can be ordered or hired of the cabinet-maker, either in Wardour Street or the College of Heralds. The old man_must have had something besides the family house. If it was only an annuity, there would be the papers to show it. Where were those papers?

This search among the drawers and shelves and desks took him several days. It was upon the second day that he heard the voice. On the fifth day, which was Saturday, he began with the books on the shelves-there were not many. First he looked behind them: nothing there; he remembered to have heard that sometimes wills, deeds, and other proofs of property have been hidden in the leaves of the Family Bible: there was no Family Bible, but there was a great quantity of novels, and Jocelyn spent a long afternoon turning over the leaves of these volumes in search of some paper which would give him a clue to his inheritance. He might just as well have spent it squaring the circle, or extracting the square root of minus one, or pursuing a metaphysical research, for all the good it did him. It is only fair to the young man to say that he would have greatly preferred spending the time in lawn-tennis, and especially in playing that game at a place which was adorned with the gracious presence of a certain young lady. "A Foreign Office clerk," said Jocelyn bitterly; a mere Foreign Office clerk is good enough to dance with. She has danced with me for a year and a half. The other fellow can't dance. But when that clerk becomes the owner of a tumble-down Grange, though there are not twenty acres of ground belonging to it, and, besides, gets all the property of old Sir Jocelyn, whom all the world knows, and inherits his

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