it before! What is it?"

"I got it at a sale in Derbyshire. I fancy it must be something like the old Battersea enamel."

"Very fine! And solid silver, too! Well, in all my experience, and I have been in the profession some twenty years, I have seen nothing like it. Beautiful! Lovely!"

"If you had not tied my hands behind my back," explained the master of the house, "I could show you, by lifting that lid, you would see prettier subjects in the interior of the vessel."

"You certainly tempt me," answered the intruder, "to give you an increased facility in moving. But it is against my rules. I always work in a methodical manner, and one of my regulations is, before I open the safe, I must bind the master of the house hand and foot in an arm-chair. But what were we talking about?"

"You were saying," returned the other, with a sigh, "that it was my own fault that I find myself in this painful, this ruinous position. As a man of education I cannot see how you can advance such a proposition."

"But that's the point. I am not a man of education. I don't know how to play the piano, and can scarcely manage a free-hand sketch of a cathedral. My Greek is shaky, and I speak French and German with an accent enough to drive a linguist mad. No, no, you take my word for it—this little incident would never have happened had you behaved wisely, and like a public-spirited citizen."

"What do you mean?" asked the householder.

"Why, this, that if you had paid more to the School Board, I would have received a better education, and have never been a housebreaker. As it is, I am only making up the difference between the sum you have paid, and the sum you should have expended."

And the burglar, helping himself to another silver tea-pot, continued his lucrative work.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.