The actor whistled a note or two. 'Now I will tell you, Joseph, what I have been saying to John,' said Mary, almost choking. Mr. Speedwell told me that when he saw you in Loudon, you told everybody in the playhouse how rich you were

'On the stage, my dear—'

Yes, on the stage, before every one, and that he saw you give a diamond ring worth he didn't know how much to one lady, and a bagful of guineas to another

On the stage, my dear creature-it was in my part!' exclaimed Rossiter, seeing what delusion was possessing his poor friend.

'I don't understand you,' said Mary, sadly.

No, I'm sure you don't. I'm an actor-to-day a prince-to-morrow a beggar: I'm only an actor and not a prudent one. There in that pocket-book is my whole worldly wealth, except my wardrobe upstairs. There are two tenpound notes in that book, and both at your service.'

'No more?' asked Mary. And is that all you have?'

Except some debts, which can be paid at my convenience. Now listen to me. Don't make yourselves so miserable about this trifle of seventy pounds. I have no doubt that I can borrow the money in the great metropolis if things come to the worst-which they won't. Things are going to mend-to become very much brighter. When they are at their worst, things must get better. Where's the "Commodore?" Not gone on one of his rambles I hope.'

No, John had seen him half an hour ago in his little garden.

he seemed incapable of refusing anything. At four o'clock, just as the evening began to close in, Phillip Pullen was telling the story he had told so often. He had spoken of his dear master and friend stricken down by the splinter-he was repeating the last of his dying words when the door of the parlour opened gently and there stood -indistinctly seen in the gloom of the evening-the counterpart of one who had long gone to his rest.

The whole group stood amazed, but the effect upon old Phillip soon became almost painful to witness. His broad chest heaved, big sweat drops trickled down his scarred forehead, and he trembled like one stricken with the palsy. You have been seeking me, Phillip Pullen-seeking me for three years

past.'

The old man bowed his head affirmatively.

You have a dead man's message to me-give it me.'

With trembling hands the old man loosened his neckerchief, and then unfastening the bosom of his shirt, produced a small leathern bag, which he held forth to the strange questioner. 'Give it to me!'

With hesitating steps the old man advanced and did as he had been commanded.

You have done your duty truly and faithfully, Phillip Pullen. You will know this before many days are past. Be at peace; you have done your duty. Your Admiral has said it.'

The figure slowly retired, the door closed. The old man fell upon his knees and uttered a few earnest words of thanksgiving that he had been allowed to discharge his duty, and had found him to whom his friend and master's last charge was consigned.

Had Phillip known that the part of Admiral Nelson had been performed by Mr. Rossiter of the T.R.D.L., by the aid of his stage wardrobe, it is more than probable that the actor's holiday' had been anything but an agreeable

one.

As it was, Mr. Rossiter had conjectured rightly that the injury Phillip had received was the cause of his delusion that the Admiral still lived, and that only to his hands was he to deliver up his trust.

The little packet was worth more than its weight in gold. Thomas Sharp had literally carried out his father's instructions. When he had received the money for his farm he had 'put it into dirt, and buried it close to his wife's grave in Crayford Churchyard.

'YES

ES, sir; I dare say we shall pass our Christmas on the sea-leastways the second mate told me just now as we should be fur enough out o' sight o' land on Christmas Day.'

He was sitting by a great heap of bales and packages upon the quay of the dock where the 'Sarah Ann,' bound for New Zealand, lay alongside taking in cargo and passengers' luggage at the same time; for the Sarah Ann' had been long enough in dock, and the chief mate walked about doing nothing, and the second mate bustled about causing other people to do a great deal.

Seeing him (the man on the quay) sitting there quite undisturbed, and yet, as it appeared, quite ready to lend a hand if need were, I noticed him more closely, and observed that he was a pale, rather sickly looking fellow, in a coarse half-seafaring dress of blue pilot cloth, but with nothing else about him which betokened the slightest acquaintance with salt water. Even his cap had nothing nautical in the manner of its set upon his closely-cropped hair; and the self-repression which was the predominant expression of his face, gave him a melancholy appearance, which I at first mistook for regret at leaving his native land, and took the liberty of hinting as much.

'Well, sir; you want to know how it comes about that I'm going off at this time o' year-and why not? If there was no other reason for my not wanting to stay in England, it's enough that I've been in prison. I've heard a ship called a floatin' prison before now, but whatever it may be to other people it's liberty to me, for I've known what it is to spend more than one Christmas under lock and key.

'Where was I born as a native? Well, that I don't rightly know, nor yet where my father and mother came from. My mother I s'pose I must ha' seen- 'twould be strange to say I hadn't; but my father, never, or at least never to my knowledge, or to theirn that brought me up. Not that they brought me up very far, because the earliest I can recollect was bein' a partic❜larly hungry little boy in a ward of the union where I was told my mother died after bein' kept outside the iron gate one winter night, till the doctor said it wouldn't do to keep her there no longer, unless they wanted to have her took straight to the dead-house, and so put the parish to the expense of a

funeral in tryin' to save a meal's victuals. This wasn't told me by the parish officers, not by the master, nor the matron, nor the overseers, nor the board of guardians, you may be sure o' that, but by a wild sort of a gal that used to come into the house an' there stay till she did something desp❜ratehev' something at the master, perhaps, or broke the winders, or tore up her blue check clothes and danced about in a blanket, all of which made her, you see, a refractory pauper, and as such she was once or twice took away to gaol, and come back again when her time was up. As to us boys-there was some fourteen or fifteen of us-we hadn't half a chance, for the victuals was none of the best or the most at all times; and only let so much as half a word be spoke, or a look give to aggravate the matron, and down you was on the skilley list-which, let me tell you, sir, meant a slice o' stale bread and a tin mug o' salt thin gruel three times a day, for the week round, instead of two days hard suet pudden for dinner, and two days three ounces of biled beef and two potatoes. I didn't know then, but I've learnt since what was the model that the Poor Law went upon in the buildins, and the diet, and most of the things that it purfessed to purvide for the paupers, in our parish at all events. Little did I know how true would come the words that that very gal spoke to me one day when I asked her how she could go on so, and get sent to prison, and wondered how she could bear it.'

"Prison," she says; "why you don't know what you're a talkin' about, it's no way different to this, except where it's a precious sight better. You'll know all about it some day, and then you'll find out that if the workus aint a preparation for prison nobody don't know what is."

What she meant, sir, was this: that the long, white, naked walls of the wards, the bare stone yard, the dress so like the convicts, the prison fare, with wuss than prison cooking, and ever so much less chance of speakin' about it, which was more than our souls was worth-the prison look of everything that we had to do with, and the liberty that everybody set over us had, and constantly took, of bullyin' us and cowing of us down; even the prison trades they taught us in the prison way, but with ignorant instructors, as