this very subject; yet to-day, shivering, starved, and but half housed—heaven knows that the even pelting of this pitiless storm above my forlorn head was nothing, if not prosaic! I remembered, too, that my only door-fastening was a slight hook, easily set at naught.

What facilities were here offered to a prowling tramp, intent upon a night's shelter! When, for a moment, I could withdraw my poor mind from the terrible pangs of hunger, it was but to fix it upon this fearful possibility. Yes, I was undoubtedly at the mercy of all the tramps in the immediate vicinity of C——! What would Alcibiades—what would my boys (camping out at Great Brewster, with a circus tent, comforters in abundance, and every appliance known to youthful Bohemia) say, if they could, this night, look in upon their miserable relative? But, no; Alcibiades should never hear how—by rejecting his safe counsel—I had dedicated myself to desolation. The misery of this night must be forever locked in my own breast! Of course, I could not be expected to close my eyes during the entire night; and, when morning came—should my life be spared till then—I should be too much exhausted from starvation to crawl out of the shed, and should, should, shou—here, I fell fast asleep!

A single hour could scarce have passed, when I was aroused by a slight jar, as of some one leaning heavily against the frame of the shed, directly where I had made my bed. In a moment I was broad awake, and, with my heart in my mouth, intently listening. I now sorely regretted having left my lamp burning; and wished I had, at least, plugged the wide knot-hole looking street-ward. The one small window, opening on our own premises, I had carefully darkened, but had forgotten to screen this irregular look-out. Luckily, it did not command, from the outside, my impromptu bed.

Directly beneath it, I could now hear footsteps. Evidently, an investigation was being made by some person outside. I managed to get upon my feet, and thus await the dreaded issue.

There was a clumsy scramble, a thud on the wet ground inside the fence, and then came heavy footsteps, evidently approaching my place of refuge. The door was tried, vigorously shaken, and opened by a crack; and then I knew that some one was manipulating the hook with a stick; was making an entrance, as I myself had done, but a few hours ago! I tottered weakly over to the woodpile. I had need to stay myself well against it, so paralyzed with fear had I become. I felt my limbs giving way; an age of horror seemed to pass in the brief moments that ensued before the hook yielded.

The door flew open with a bang! and, then,—then the entire shed reeled, darkened, disappeared; and I knew no more!

Consciousness returning, I found myself reclined upon my shaving couch. A pile of soiled clothes supported my head; my face and hair were dripping with water, which had apparently been showered upon me without stint, or stay, from a wooden piggin standing near, which I remembered to have set under a big leak in the woodshed roof, before settling myself to repose.

Beside me stood a tall, bearded person, holding in his left hand a smoking kerosene lamp, and with his right still liberally sprinkling me from the piggin, and, the while, anxiously scanning my face. As my scattered senses pulled themselves together, I discerned that his demeanour was pacific—even friendly. I found his face by no means bad, with its strong features, determined expression, and the kindly smile which disclosed his sound, white teeth. As I attempted to rise, he said, respectfully: "Pray lie down a bit, madam; you'll be all right again in a moment. You fainted dead away; and, upon my word, I could have knocked myself down for giving you such a turn. It was a deuced sight worse, too," added he, "when I found that you were 'The Prisoner's Friend.'

"Maybe you don't know my face now, madam; but I have known yours, any time, these four years; ever since you brought me that fruit with the posy of pinks an' old-man's love, the time I was laid up in the prison hospital."

No; I could not recall the man's face; but I remember well that such a person had sent me, through the warden, a grateful acknowledgment of my little kindness, in the form of a rosewood box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and lined with garnet velvet (his own dainty work), and containing a paper thus inscribed:

"Adam Beale, to 'The Prisoner's Friend,' with best wishes."

The warden, as I presently recollected, had, at that time, told me that Adam was serving out five years' sentence for passing a forged check. Well, here, like a Jack-in-a-box, Adam himself had turned up.

It was now my turn to "take unto myself shame and confusion of face,"—found harbouring in a shed, alone, and at midnight! To give the man, an ex-convict, and alone with me, in this forlorn place, that explanation demanded by the situation, would undoubtedly put me absolutely at his mercy, yet, perceiving that there was no other way out of it, I at once made a clean breast. The tale of my woes well finished, the humour of the whole affair, together with Adam's expression of blank amazement, so upset me that I ended with a peal of hysterical laughter, in which, as I could see by the twitching of his visible muscles, good manners alone restrained my auditor from joining me.

Wisely deferring the relation of his own adventures to serener moments, my convict, at my request, at once set about the work of breaking and entering.

The storm had abated. It was now midnight, and Miss Pettingrew presumably off duty. With empty barrels and boxes, found in the shed, the level of a side window was soon attained, and Adam, demolishing a pane of glass, deftly undid a patent fastening. It was but a moment ere he had entered, and unlocked the side door for the admission of my somewhat crestfallen self.

Nor was it long ere my deliverer had made a famous fire in the kitchen stove, and, in his shirt-sleeves, while his dripping coat steamed hard by on a clothes-horse, was preparing a pot of coffee, while I laid the supper-table.

It goes, without saying, that my zest for this meal was not slight; and the hunger of my guest, as may be inferred, was well-nigh as sharp as my own. The cat having obligingly dined and supped upon omelette and Lyonnaise potato, my corned beef was still intact; and, with some trifling additions, and that best of sauces—hunger—our meal proved delicious.

Well, thought I, as I bestowed a second section of sponge cake, and a third cup of coffee, upon my hungry guest—truth is, undoubtedly, stranger than fiction! Could Alcibiades (dear man!) be told that, by scorning his kind advice, I had brought myself to so strange a pass as to be supping at midnight with an ex-convict, would he believe it? As for my dazed self, well could I have craved, with that historical old woman of abridged "petticoat," the decisive "bark" of my own "little dog" as assurance that "I was I."

Our hunger appeased, Adam told me how he had come to find himself on that stormy night, on his way to Boston, penniless and shelterless. His sentence had, he said, expired three weeks ago; and, with his "freedom suit," and the regulation gratuity of five dollars from the Prison Aid Society, along with its immemorial offer of a ticket for the West, he had been duly discharged. Having a mind to re-establish himself in his native city—New York—he had declined emigrating to Idaho, but, finding himself somewhat the worse for five years of confinement, bad air, and poor diet, had resolved to recruit for a time, in mountain air, before seeking his city home.

With