he knew, and who in the intervals of reading the evening papers exchanged remarks with him of that recondite and abstruse nature which railway travellers have made their own; but for once Mr. Asherill felt out of tune with politics, religion, commerce, and the stock exchange.

Something once very real had risen like a ghost before him, and he was not perhaps altogether sorry when, the last of his companions bidding him good evening, he was left to pursue the remainder of his journey in solitude, except for the presence of that phantom shadow which he faced resolutely, retracing step by step the road they two—the trouble and himself—had frantically hurried over together.

Out of the shadows of the past, the events of one day—one wet Saturday, one awful Saturday—showed themselves clear and distinct as a light tracing, against a dark background:—

He beheld day breaking upon him; a man out at elbows as regarded fortune—not for the first time in his life. A great dread had kept him wakeful. He had loathed the blackness of night, and yet when light dawned he had hidden his face from it.

What more?—a mean, poorly-furnished room; a sick woman to whom he carried the best cup of tea and a slice of bread toasted with his own hands, and then sat down to read a letter which took all appetite from him.

Out in the drenching rain, with only an old torn disreputable-looking cotton umbrella between him and the weather—out, with the wet soaking through his poor patched boots—out, his fingers numb with cold, and his heart less numb than paralysed with the same dread a hare feels when, her strength spent, she hears the hounds gaining on her.

From office to office—from one friend—Heaven save the mark!—to another; out again in the weather, with "No" ringing in every possible accent in which the word could be uttered or disguised; out hour after hour—for it was before the Saturday early-closing movement had been thought of—too wretched to feel hunger, too miserable to be exactly conscious of the length and depth of his almost frantic despair; out in the sloppy streets, under the sweeping pelting rain, with every resource exhausted, with ruin and worse than ruin staring him in the face.

For one desperate moment he thought of the river, sullen and turbid, flowing away to the sea, that would end the agony, frustrate the disgrace. He would do it—he would; and he went hurrying towards the Thames. There did not intervene five minutes between him and eternity when his eye happened quite by chance to fall on a great warehouse over the gates of which was written—

"Archibald Mortomley, White Lead and Colour Manufacturer."

"It would be nothing to him," said the poor wretch to himself. "I will ask; I can but be refused."

And so with the consciousness of that flowing river still upon him, only fainter, he closed his umbrella and, stepping within the formidable-looking gates, asked if he could see Mr. Mortomley on private business.

"He is engaged just now," answered a clerk, who knew Mr. Asherill by sight. "If you step up into his office and wait a minute, he will be with you."

Up into Mr. Mortomley's office went the man wet and miserable, who had scarcely had a civil word spoken to him during the whole of his weary pilgrimage,—up into the warmth, and what seemed to him the luxury of that comfortably furnished apartment.

Into the Turkey carpet his chilled feet sank gratefully. He was so wet he did not like to sit down and tarnish with his dripping garments the morocco leather of the easy chair. A sense of peace, and leisure, and quietness, and trust fell upon him.

The rush of the river grew less audible.

"I will do it. I will tell him all, by——."

And never in his later years had Mr. Asherill uttered the sacred name with such agonized earnestness as then.

A man entered, old, white-haired, affluent; a man who did not merely look like a gentleman, but who was one; a man who talked little about religion, but whose life had been a long worship, a perpetual thanksgiving, a continual striving to do good.