there. An' then you come into my 'ead all at wunst, Mike, s'elp me, you did! A few pounds wouldn't do you no 'urt, eh, pal?"

Coe turned his head slowly, till he could catch a furtive glimpse of the tempter's face. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was something savage about his set mouth. "To-morrow's Saturday night," Jarmey remarked, meeting the other's look steadily. "There's Bill Walker's trap as I can 'ave for the arstin'

Jarmey rose, stretched himself, and moved towards the door. With his hand on the latch he stopped.

"If there's any pertickler matter as you'd like to talk over with me to-night, Mike," he said, "you know where to find me."

Coe said nothing, and he and the child were left alone. By the light of the candle Letty still kept wringing her dress; then The door of the wash-house all at once she arranged with both hands her disoropened, and a rushing sound told that dered hair. Her eyes dwelt constantly heavy rain was falling without. It had upon her father, with an expression of ingrown dusk whilst they sat together, and telligent sympathy beyond her years— the glow from the grate shone ruddily upon she was barely nine-but she did not the face which appeared in the open door-speak. After spending a few minutes in way. It was that of a very little girl, rag- the ordering of such objects as the room gedly dressed, and with a portion of what contained, Letty went quietly forth into the was once a straw hat upon her head. Such rain, speedily returning with a tea-pot, clothes as she had were quite soaked with wherein, as the custom held, Mrs. Jarmey the rain; the water trickled from her frock had prepared tea for the two. Two cups on to the floor. At her entrance the men without saucers, some bread on a tin plate, became silent. She, without speaking, some dripping in a little basin, — these went to a dark corner, laid by her hat and things completed the arrangements for something she carried in her hands, and the meal. For table the top of the boiler then began to wring her dress. Her father served. occupied the only chair, but there was a little three-legged stool, which Letty had used ever since she was a baby, and upon this she presently sat down.

For a minute or two no one stirred. Coe's head had fallen again; Jarmey sat with his hands clasped over his knees, looking at the fire. It grew darker.

"Father"a soft little voice from the corner broke the silence—“shall I light the candle?"

Coe grunted compliance, without moving. Letty rose, lit a tallow dip, which was stuck in the neck of a bottle, and depositing it on the floor, reseated herself. Ned Jarmey, turning to discover why the light was put on the floor, saw something which made him nudge Coe, to turn his attention to the child.

"What's wrong?" Michael asked, with harshness which was more the outcome of his mood than expressive of his feeling when Letty was concerned.

Michael drank a cup of tea, but ate nothing. Whilst Letty was clearing away, he kept jerking his head towards her, and at length asked a question,

"So you want a new pair o' shoes, my

girl?

These are very bad, father," replied Letty, looking down at her feet ruefully. How cold the brick floor must have felt!

Presently he turned again, and again asked a question:

"You're wet through wi' the rain, ain't you?"

"It did rain very hard, father."
"Let's look at your 'at."

Letty showed it.

So you want a new 'at, eh?"

The child looked pained, as if he had been accusing her. She could not reply. And y'aint got no stockin's on, neither," Coe continued, examining her closely.

"They told me at school to-day as I Letty made no reply in words, but, cross-mustn't come no more without," Letty ing one foot over her knee, held up in her said, afraid to look up. hand what had hitherto been the sole of a "They did, eh?" shoe. The piece of leather had come off in her run home through the rain, and as she wore no stockings, her bare little foot had stepped through the puddles unprotected.

"Ain't you got a' old pair i' the shop?" asked Michael in a hoarse voice, when he had slowly turned his head to Jarmey.

Coe fell back into brooding, and spoke no more for a couple of hours. Then he went and sought Ned Jarmey.

It was, then, on the morning after this that poor Pat fell ill, or at all events that his illness was discovered. It was the climax of Coe's misfortunes.

It left him

without his ordinary morning's work, and with leisure to brood once more. But Letty's distress was extreme. Playthings she had never known, any more than other children of like parents, yet her shy and silent nature led her to seek some kind of solitary amusement, and in the donkey she had found a never-failing resource. Pat had become her father's property when Letty was five years old, and since then scarcely a day had passed without an exchange of confidences between her and her four-footed friend, confidences which, to Letty's mind, suffered no lack of reciprocity from the mere fact that Pat could not audibly converse. However late the hour of Pat's return to his shed, the little girl managed to say good-night to him (children like Letty know not regularity of bed-time; you see babies playing on the doorsteps at midnight); and, on those happy Sundays when no occasional employment offered itself, there were long hours of strange happiness, whilst she sat on her three-legged stool, talking in a child's undertone, and gathering answer and comment from Pat's much-meaning eyes. To go this morning out into the yard and see the donkey lying helpless and suffering on his straw, was an experience so new and sad that Letty stood motionless, and tears begun to trickle down her cheeks.

to tempt his appetite with choce bits of carrot or other similar dainty. But the donkey was past eating.

In the course of the day Coe and Jarmey had a long conversation together in the latter's sitting-room, the door which led into the shop, where Mrs. Jarmey sat, being closed the while. The result of this conference appeared to be satisfactory, for Jarmey shortly after went off whistling, having, as he passed through the shop, bidden his mother look up a pair of shoes to fit Letty. Generosity was not Mr. Jarmey's weakness, and he had only just made up his mind to fulfil his promise of the evening before.

Michael wandered about aimlessly. He seemed to shun the wash-house. Once or twice in the course of the afternoon he looked through the window from the yard, but did not enter. The coarse outlines of his face at all times gave him a forbidding expression, which belied his real nature; to-day he seemed in silent anger, and through the grime you could discern on his face an unwholesome pallor. He had no meals, but was several times in the public-house hard by. About nine o'clock at night he again resorted thither, and sat in a corner, eyeing comers and goers darkly. He drank several glasses of spirits, after each payment turning the coppers out of his pocket, and counting them anxLettyiously, as if to make sure how much indulgence he could still allow himseif.

It was a wretched sleety day, and saw with commiseration how the cold rain dripped through the roofing of the sheda mere pent-house - and soaked into Pat's coat. The wind, too, swept so bitterly about the little yard; as she watched she saw the poor beast shiver. Could not something be done to make him more comfortable? That was her first thought, as soon as she had realized the miserable state of things. Why should not Pat be brought into the wash-house, where there was at all events a dry floor and shelter from the wind, and where at night a fire would be lit? As soon as she saw her father, Letty put the question to him, and Coe, partly because he liked to do what the child wished, partly in the hope that shelter might really be of help to the animal, after a little muttering accepted the idea. With the help of Ned Jarmey, a shutter was thrust under the donkey's body, and Pat with considerable difficulty was transferred to the wash-house. Moreover permission was given to Letty to light a fire at once. To-day being Stur day, the child had no school to atd. She desired nothing better than to sit by Pat's side and talk to him, at times trying

At half past ten, Ned Jarmey came into the bar, nodded to Coe, and ordered drink for himself. For half an hour he stood talking to chance acquaintances and smoking his pipe. Then he looked at the clock, winked at Michael, and went forth. Coe followed.

It was customary for Letty to go out at nine o'clock each night to fetch Mrs. Jarmey's supper beer. To-night she took the jug as usual and set out for the publichouse. Between this latter and Mr. Jarmey's shop was a small undertaker's, and, strange to say, Letty never failed unless the weather was very bad indeed - to stop for a minute or two before the undertaker's windows, gazing at certain remarkable works of art which they presented to public view. The glass front was divided into some half-dozen partitions, on each of which was painted a representation of a funeral, from the humblest and cheapest kind up to a display of lugubrious grandeur which could serve only as an ideal impossible of attainment to the clients of this particular undertaker. First of all, a very plain hearse, drawn by a dispirited

watched Letty's return that Coe himself went into the bar.

and weak-kneed horse, and followed by one mourning coach of corresponding simplicity, the attendant officials presenting Mrs. Jarmey's appetite seemed to have a disreputable and beery aspect; above little need of anything save liquid sustewas written: "This style, £2, 2s." The nance; at supper she occasionally nibbled next compartment displayed the undeni- a bit of bread and cheese with the two able advantages consequent upon the out- teeth which alone were left to her, but more lay of an additional guinea; and so on, often, as to-night, she preferred to puff at till the climax was reached in a magnifi- a dirty little pipe whilst consuming her cent procession, prancing, jet-black steeds, beer. The old woman must have been monumental hearse, coachmen and mutes greatly on the wrong side of three score of imposing severity and finish, cambric and ten, and her age was neither cheerful handkerchiefs visible at the eyes of nor venerable. Every day and all day long mourners in the coaches, waving plumes, she sat in the shop, busying herself in a -in short, every appurtenance sanctioned variety of ways. Though very deaf, she by custom as belonging to the trappings managed, by dint of life-long experience, and the suits of woe, and, in the back- to transact business with customers, and ground, a landscape leading up to a very the only occasion of her smiling was when gorgeous cemetery, whither the train was she had cheated some one out of a copper. tending. "This style, £52, 10s." In the In the shop, as usual, she took her supper daytime it was possible to pass by these to-night, and Letty, in return for the gift designs without greatly marking them, but of shoes, felt it a sort of duty to leave Pat at night the gas within the shop was so for a few minutes and eat her own piece arranged as to throw out the pictures in of bread and butter in Mrs. Jarmey's combold relief, and the window never lacked pany. The two sat amid strange surits group of admiring gazers. For Letty roundings. A single gas-jet hanging from Coe it had an irresistible attraction. It the ceiling dimly illuminated the indeheld her attention as a work of art (the scribable collection of rubbish always boldest example of which she had any found in such shops; scarcely a conceivknowledge), and then again the sight of able article of personal wear or household these so various funerals filled her with a furniture which did not lie in one or other sadness which was even a sort of pleasure. of the foul, rusty, rotting heaps. The She speculated about the occupants of the filthy window was pasted over with notices hearses and the mourning coaches, and to the outside public; from these you had constructed for herself tales about learned that fifty tons of rags and fifty tons each picture her imagination working of bones were wanted immediately by Mr. in that unconscious way peculiar to chil- Jarmey, who was prepared to pay the very dren. Various families of her acquaint- highest price for these articles, as also for ance grew associated in her thought with kitchen stuff, medicine bottles, cast-off the several processions, with all save that clothing, waste paper, even books. The which cost fifty guineas. No family that air within was damp and heavy with every she knew could attain to that splendor, and possible unhealthy odor. Mrs. Jarmey sat indeed she had only heard of one person on a back-less chair, and incessantly mutat whose interment such magnificence tered to herself, even with the pipe bewould be appropriate or possible. Letty tween her lips. Only once did Letty was convinced that the last picture repre- endeavor to communicate with her. Full sented the funeral of "the queen.' And in the gas-light there hung an old framed the first, the humblest of all, the two portrait of the queen, very highly colored. guinea burial? About that she was equally It was a recent acquisition, and Letty kept sure the poor hearse contained the coffin her eyes fixed upon it in eating her supper, of a child, and that child - herself. thinking of the fifty guinea funeral, and other things. Association of ideas at last induced her to rise and ask Mrs. Jarmey a question in the only feasible way, namely, by shouting into her ear.

As she stood gazing to-night, holding the empty jug, a hand was laid on her shoulder, and a rough voice spoke to her, "What call 'ave you to 'ang about the street when you're sent for something? Get the beer, an' orff 'ome with you!"

It was her father, and she had scarcely ever known him speak so harshly to her. She hurried to the public-house and back to the shop. It was only when he had

"What does the queen have for supper, Mrs. Jarmey?"

"How sh'd I know!" was the only reply, given rather bad-temperedly.

When Mrs. Jarmey had finished her beer, she had a habit of rising and stamp