What A Man Soweth
Author: Stebbing, Grace
Date: 2016-02-11T06:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction
Description: Ebook prepared by crutledge@knology.net
Rights: Public Domain

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—NOT A POOR CREATURE AT ALL.

CHAPTER II—“I WILL BE GOOD!”

CHAPTER III—JOHNNY TURNER’S POCKETS.

CHAPTER IV—STANDING TREAT ON TWO SHILLINGS A WEEK.

CHAPTER V—THE FIRST CRIME.

CHAPTER VI—DAWNING REMORSE.

CHAPTER VII—ON THE DOORSTEP.

CHAPTER VIII—SUSAN TURNER TRIUMPHANT.

CHAPTER IX—JOHN TURNERS WISH.

CHAPTER X—SOUNDING LOVERS PRAISES.

CHAPTER XI—A PAUSE ON THE BRINK.

CHAPTER XII—A FRESH START.

CHAPTER XIII—MR. KING KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT.

CHAPTER XIV—REJOICETH NOT IN INIQUITY.

CHAPTER XV—MRS. BENNETT MAKES A LATE CALL.

CHAPTER XVI—A PARTING PRESENT FOR MRS. BARKER.

CHAPTER XVII—HOW ABOUT A CHARACTER?

CHAPTER XVIII—MRS. TURNER STARTLES HER SON.

CHAPTER XIX—MRS. TURNER LIKES RIBBONS.

CHAPTER XX—EDITH SIGHS, AND SO DOES SUSAN.

CHAPTER XXI—ON THE PADDINGTON BRIDGE.

CHAPTER XXII—IN TRINITY CHURCH.

CHAPTER XXIII—THE SCAPEGOAT.

CHAPTER XXIV—MR. BRAMSTON BUYS AN ENGAGEMENT RING.

CHAPTER XXV—AT FRANK KING’S COUNTRY VICARAGE.

CHAPTER XXVI—HAPPY PEOPLE AND A PLEASANT HOME.

CHAPTER XXVII—THE SUCCESS OF BAD SCHEMES.

CHAPTER XXVIII—ROCKS AHEAD.

CHAPTER XXI—“WHERE IS MY SILK?”

CHAPTER XXX—MR. MELLON ACTS UPON ADVICE.

CHAPTER XXXI—MR. DRUMMOND WON’T BELIEVE IT.

CHAPTER XXXII—HIS FATHER’S BIBLE.

CHAPTER XXXIII—SUSAN GOES TO PADDINGTON.

CHAPTER XXXIV—AT CHESMAN’S ONCE MORE.

CHAPTER XXXV—LIKE HIS FATHER, AFTER ALL.

CHAPTER XXXVI—THE NEW PARTNER.

CHAPTER XXXVII—IN ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL.

CHAPTER XXXVIII—THEIR OLD FRIEND, MRS. BARKER.

CHAPTER XXXIX—A NORFOLK TEA-PARTY.

CHAPTER XL—MILLY CRID CHANGES HER NAME.

CHAPTER XLI—THE PURPLE-LEATHER BIBLE ONCE MORE.

LIST of ILLUSTRATIONS

- Johnny turned and looked up at her with a grave nod of his head.

- Then he turned, and shut the door, and locked it.

- John Turner lifted his eyes to his questioner's face, and met that searching look.

- “Ah! what a remarkably good face your watch has.”

CHAPTER I
NOT A POOR CREATURE AT ALL.

“What a man soweth, that shall he reap,” said old Mrs. Barker in a low voice, and more as though she were speaking to herself—to her own heart-—than to the ears of any other listener.

But she raised her head, and looked very earnestly at her companion as a short offhand laugh fell upon her ears, accompanied by the mocking words—

“Ah! well, you see, neighbour, that Bible proverb says, ‘what a man sows’ it leaves us poor women alone.”

Mrs. Turner knew perfectly well that she was talking nonsense. She knew as well as you and I know that the word“man” stands in that proverb, as generally throughout the Bible, for mankind at large—men and women, young and old alike. But as with most people peculiarly in need of it, Mrs. Turner would not stand being warned or tutored by any one, not even by the gentle old woman whose light shone so clearly before men, that even her most careless and thoughtless neighbours had their respect as it were compelled from them for the faithful follower of the Lord.

Mrs. Barker was perfectly welcome to come into Mrs. Turner’s rooms as often as ever she pleased to do so, and Mrs. Turner, on her side, paid very frequent visits to the clean and cosy little kitchen of her companion lodger.

“But I don’t want texts thrown at my head,” she had roundly declared more than once,“and what’s more, I won’t have them. When I’ve a fancy, for that sort of thing the church is as free to me as it is to another, and I can go in there, and let the minister preach at me—it’s his business; and I can listen or not, as I please.”

“That is to say, if you choose deliberately to break the Third Commandment,” said honest Alec Duncan, who had come in one afternoon from work, while his wife was mangling some clothes for Mrs. Turner.

“What do you mean by that?” was the sharp retort.“Who said anything about the Third Commandment?”

“Well, you did not say anything about it, true for you,” answered Duncan, in his slow, deliberate tones;“but you implied a good deal, it seems to me, when you talked glibly of going into the house of the Lord Almighty, to listen or not, as you chose. ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that’”-

“Oh! there, give me my clothes, and let me be off,” exclaimed the young woman, hastily interrupting him.“I never did see such a preaching set as you all are, with Granny Barker to head you, in my life. And I believe she thinks it one of the duties of existence.”

“And not so far out if she does,” said Alec Duncan, quietly, as he closed the door after his laden visitor.“Not so far out if she does, seem’ as St. Paul tells the folks in more than one of his Epistles, to teach and admonish one another. But it will take a good .measure of the Lord’s own power to admonish that poor, short-sighted thing.”

“Susan Turner doesn’t think herself a poor, shortsighted thing, I can tell you,” answered his wife, as she turned from the mangle, and gave the fire a good stir up under the kettle. Her husband shook his head—

“Nay then, Molly, I doubt not. I never yet met with one of her sort that did. They mostly seem to get along well at the outset, in this world, and they forget to look out for a home in the other, or are too dull-hearted to take any real thought of anything, to come after this everyday life. Just a good day’s work, and a good day’s pay, a tidy bit of furniture, a smart gown, and a full Sunday’s dinner— that’s about as much as they care to take in of the pile of blessings the Lord offers us. And they’d sooner go without even them than give due thanks for them.”

Meantime Susan Turner, while she was being thus discussed, walked off briskly, in the prime of her strength and vigour, with her bundle of clotheswith her bundle of clothes, to her own home at the other end of the street. So far as this world and its affairs were concerned, she certainly was anything but a poor creature, and had proved herself anything but a short-sighted one. Having spent five or six years in service, at the age of twenty-two she married a clever young house-painter—not, unhappily, because she loved him, but because he earned over three pounds a week as a rule, and she expected consequently that in a marriage with him she should secure for herself a life of considerable self-indulgence.

Two years passed happily enough, and so much to the young wife’s satisfaction, that the husband never found out that she was more in love with his income than with himself.

Had he lived longer, it is doubtful if he could have remained in this merciful state of blindness; but when his little curly-headed Johnny was just beginning to toddle towards him when he returned home at night, and to shout“Dadda!” by way of good-morning at the first light of dawn, he was killed in a railway accident.

The widow’s tears lasted until she was awarded good compensation by the railway company, and then, although she went about with a decorously grave face above her black dress, she had, in the secrecy of her own heart, decided that she was wonderfully better off than most people, long before her neighbours had ceased to condole with her on her sudden loss.

With the income from the compensation money, a couple of days’ sharing a week at the house where she had been servant before her marriage, and a little needlework to fill up spare time, Mrs. Turner found it a very easy matter to retain the rooms her husband had furnished so well for her at their marriage, and to keep herself and her little boy in very comfortable condition. Decidedly she was not a poor creature, in the world’s way of reckoning that class; neither had she proved herself, according to the same standard, up to the present time short-sighted.

When this history commences four years had passed since James Turner’s terrible death, and five-year-old Johnny was as bonny a looking little chap as any woman would wish to set eyes on—a well-dressed, well-fed, well-washed, merry-tempered child.

“A little lamb easily trained for the Lord’s fold, if you will only do it,” said old Mrs. Barker, tenderly stroking the child’s soft cheek one morning, when his mother had run down with him to the kitchen, to ask if she could do any marketing for her old friend while she did her own.

The old woman’s simple wants were soon told, and then five minutes were spent, much to the mother’s satisfaction, in giving fond words of praise, and caresses, to bright-eyed Johnny. A large share of his heart’s love was given to his mother’s aged fellow-lodger, and when at last Mrs. Turner said they really must be setting out on their shopping, and prepared to lead him away, he turned back at the door, to shout out—

“Good-bye a’ present, Mittiss Barter; when us turns bat I’ll brin you your fins.”

“God’s blessing be with you, my darling!” was the old dame’s answer: but she sighed as the door closed behind the bright, prosperous-looking pair, and the sigh was not for herself in her lonely and straitened old age, but for them.

It was well, and very well, to pray for God’s blessing to be with the child, but alas for the child whose own parent scorns such praying! Even in the course of the past five minutes the mother had uttered many a careless word, from which the old woman would gladly have shielded its quick and innocent ears.

“What do you think he did yesterday?” asked Mrs. Turner, laughing, and shaking her head at the pair of blue eyes raised to her face brimful of fun;“what do you think was my little rogue’s last bit of mischief?”

Mrs. Barker stroked the soft hair with a loving smile.“Nothing naughty, I hope,” she said gently.

“Naughty!” echoed the young mother with a mocking laugh.“A chit of a child like that, naughty! No, it was the best joke in life, I thought. When I came in yesterday afternoon, I left the young man on the door-steps watching a Punch and Judy show. As I got to our window the show went off, but my small monkey had found something else to interest him by that time. Jimmy Bennet, opposite, had brought a big bag of marbles out to the front, and was sitting on their doorstep sorting some into a basket. While he was busy, his mother shouted to him through the window,—she’s a bit hasty with her children, you know,—so off young Jimmy flew, never daring to pick up his property first. Somebody else did that for him. Johnny was off from our door, over the road, and back again, and upstairs by my side with the whole of the marbles cuddled up in his arms, almost before I could draw breath, to laugh at his impudence.”

“But oh I it was worse than impudence,” said Mrs. Barker, quietly, in a shocked tone.“My little good Johnny won’t take other people’s things ever again, will he?”

The little boy looked up with a questioning, earnest gaze at the gentle old woman’s grave, grieved face. He was trouble. Then he looked at his mother, and bounded away from his monitress with a long-drawn sigh of relief, for his mother was laughing, and as she took her child’s hand in hers, to lead him away, she said contemptuously—

“There, granny, you’ll frighten the child if you talk like that, and draw that long face. And all for what? For a little bit of child’s sharpness. For all Mrs. Bennet’s quick temper, she took the matter a deal more sensibly than you do. When she came over to fetch her boy’s things back—she’d seen them go—she and I had a rare laugh together over this young monkey.”

“And she made Dimmy dive me six of his marbles to teep for my very own,” chimed in Johnny. “So it was a dood fing, you see, as I did tate um” And he put his chubby, disengaged hand in his pocket to have the pleasure of rattling the shiny treasures it contained.

And then Mrs. Turner found that it was growing late, and led the child away, calling out his promise to Mrs. Barker, and receiving” her longing, heartfelt prayer in return.

The child was a pleasant object, with its neat garments and bright little healthy, rosy face trotting along by its mother’s side, and most of the tradesmen had a kind word for the little fellow as his mother stopped at their shops to make her purchases. But when the pair got to the greengrocer’s, Johnny was far more attracted by the sight of a huge barrelshaped basket piled full, literally rolling over, with great, splendid, red-cheeked apples, than by any number of kind words or caresses. The shopkeepers were inside. Johnny’s eyes were on a level with the apples. Presently his hand went up level with his eyes. The apple was close to the edge of the basket beside him, and it did look so delicious. Mrs. Turner pushed her little boy nearer still to the basket, in pushing her way into the shop-door to pay for the cabbage she had just chosen out for herself. The basket edge was squeezed a little, and down rolled the apple into Johnny’s hand.

He pulled his mother.“Look, mother!” he whispered, eagerly.

She looked down.“Who gave you that, child ? she whispered back.

“Nobody, muvver; it tumbled over.”

“Umph,” she muttered, with a quick turn back to the people in the shop, and then adding, with a cautionary squeeze to the small hand she held, and in the small low tone, “ Well, you needn’t to drop it now you’ve got it; come along,” and receiving her change, Susan Turner led the child across to the other side, away from the eyes of the rightful owners of the fruit, and turned as quickly as possible into another street.

“ That apple will be fine and good, won’t it?” she said, gaily, when they were safely away from the green-grocer’s neighbourhood.

The child held it up again for admiration.“Ay, muvver, won’t it? It’s ever so lovely. It’s so big it would be fine and good baked for mine tea, with lots of sugar.”

The mother laughed.“Ay, to be sure; but you’re a knowing little chap, aren’t you? Well, seein as you’ve provided yourself with the apple, I don’t mind finding the sugar. And now—why, where are you going? Don’t know your own home yet, child? Come, hop up the steps while mother finds her key, and take the tea and herrings for Granny Barker.”

The next minute the door was opened, and Johnny, holding his apple very tightly in one hand as well as his fingers would grasp it, and with the parcels for their fellow-lodger clutched up against his chest darted off down to the kitchen.

CHAPTER II
“I WILL BE GOOD!”

A little kick at the kitchen door, and a shrill little cry,“May I tome in?”

“Ay, to be sure, my bonny,” came the hearty answer from within the room.“Come your ways in, my pretty.”

“But I tant,” came back the reply rather disconsolately, in the same shrill little voice;“I hasn’t dot no hands.”

“Ah, to be sure; my poor little bonny is laden with the old granny’s things,” exclaimed the old woman, with sudden recollection, and rising and going to the door as. fast as her aged and infirm limbs would allow her—

“Hey!” she said, with a loving smile, as the child bounded in with his burdens.“No wonder the little one had got no hands to open the door when one of them was taken up with that fine, big apple. Pray, who gave you that beauty, my bonny?”

“Nonebodies,” came the ready answer, with a triumphant laugh.“And,” after a slight pause, and with a knowing nod of the shining head and a merry little air of mystery—“And muvver didn’t buyed it neiver.”

Mrs. Barker was as puzzled as the child meant she should be, but she began to look rather troubled also. She put her arm around Johnny, and drew him to her side as she sat down again in her armchair.

“Mother didn’t buy it, and no one gave it to you, my wee mannie,” she repeated slowly.“ Then, did you buy it yourself?”

“No,” said Johnny, more soberly. He was a very teachable, impressionable child, and Mrs. Barker looked so grave that his sunny smiles faded away as he continued—“I hasn’t no pennies, or I might ha’ buyed su’ffin. But I didn’t, and this appul fallded over the basket at the dreendrocer’s, and I catched it, and muvver whispered to hold it tight. And I did. And I’se to have it baked for tea, an lots ov sugar wiv it.”

The child ceased speaking, and his companion made no reply for some moments other than by a sob, which was almost a groan.

“Oh! my darling—oh! my poor wee lamb,” she burst out at last.“May the dear Lord have mercy upon you!”

“I fink I’ll go up to muvver now,” murmured the little boy, awed by the old woman’s solemnity and the slow tears falling from her aged eyes.

“Yes, my darling, you shall,” she answered at once, and rising once more as she spoke.“We will both go up together to mother, to explain to her how her little Johnny got that apple; and then I expect mother and Johnny will go and carry it back to the shop, or pay the poor man for it, who it belongs to, because it isn’t Johnny’s at all, you know. And Johnny doesn’t wish to keep what isn’t his, I’m sure, does he?”

And while,she thus tenderly tried to teach justice and honesty to the poor little fellow, the two climbed the stairs together, and entered Mrs. Turner’s sitting-room, the door of which had been left open for Johnny’s benefit.

Susan looked round with some surprise when she saw her visitor.

“Why to be sure, Mrs. Barker, you are welcome enough,” she exclaimed, with a sort of good-humoured, offhand heartiness usual with her when she was not put out.“Who’d have thought of seeing you up here at this time of day? Sit down and rest you a bit, now you are here.”

But Mrs. Barker held back from the offered chair, looking confused and timid. Mrs. Turner stared at her, and from her to the child.

“Has Johnny been up to any mischief?” she inquired at last.

Mrs. Barker seemed to feel the question a relief. It gave her, at any rate, some opening for what she had come to say.

“Oh! nothing,” she replied, quickly;“no mischief that cannot be easily remedied. He’s been telling me something that I’m sure you don’t rightly understand—something about this apple.”

“What?” exclaimed Susan Turner, with a sharp interruption, and her cheeks suddenly flaming to crimson.

The old woman’s timidity increased. But when she started to come up-stairs she had not done it with any prospect of performing a pleasant task, but to work in her Lord’s vineyard. She clasped her aged, withered hands closely, and repeated—

“Yes; about this apple. I know, as you’ve been out so long, as you must be busy now, so I came to offer to go with Johnny for you, round to the greengrocer’s to give back the apple”-

“And I should like to know why to give it back?” still more sharply.“I should just like to know why?”

“Because,” came the answer more firmly,“because Johnny says plainly that he took it from the shop without payment, or the owner’s knowledge; and you could not be so bad as to let him keep it.”

Mrs. Barker ceased, and for a few moments there was silence in the room, the child’s wondering blue eyes raised first to one face then to the other of the two women whom he loved and reverenced, and whom he now found set against each other so absolutely on a question of right and wrong. The baby brain was full of troubled thoughts.

But he had not long peace in which to ponder them. Suddenly his mother’s growing passion burst forth in a perfect tempest.

Springing to the door, she flung it wide open again, exclaiming as she did so, and with a face crimson with anger—

“There’s the door, ma’am, and that’s your way back to your kitchen; and when you’ve got another’ £t for interference, or impertinent meddling with what doesn’t concern you, coming on, you’d better make yourself scarce of Susan Turner’s neighborhood, I warn you! From old or young, gentle or simple, she’s never stood it from a girl, and she ain’t a-goin’ to now. Take the apple back, indeed! If fifty apples fall into the child’s hands he shall keep them all, and a fig for all the old preaching drones, men or women either.”

And with those last words the furious woman slammed the door to again behind her retreating visitor, and looked about her as though in search of some further object upon which to vent her excitement.

Her eyes fell on terrified little Johnny, who had cowered into the window away from his mother, whom he had never before seen in this tempestuous state of wrath.

The frightened expression on his face appeared to be a fresh irritation to her. She sprang back from the door, seized the child by the shoulder, and shook him roughly as she asked him—

“Don’t look at me like that, child, or I’ll beat you. What did you tell that stupid old woman about the apple?”

Johnny trembled and whimpered, but did not speak. He got a second shaking.

“Can’t you hear when you are spoken to, child? Answer me this minute—what did you tell her? ”

“I—I”

“Well!”

“I—I—told her—as—as—I took the appul— appul—wifout the man seein’—me, and you told me to keep it an’—say nuffin’.”

“Then that’s for you, you long-tongued chatterbox!” exclaimed Mrs. Turner, giving the child a box on the ears which sent it staggering back against the window, and of which the memory was never effaced throughout its life.

She had never struck her boy violently before, and, truth to say, she would instantly have recalled the blow she had given now had it been possible. But her passion was much too high for her to allow even a little child to see any relenting in her, and meantime the unjust blow had aroused corresponding rage in him.

After the first pitiful scream, extorted from him by the sharp pain, the little fellow kept back all further cries or tears with that strong power of grim determination which some children possess; and at last, whilst his mother was debating in her mind how best to work things round again between herself and him, into their ordinary channel, he suddenly muttered sullenly, but very audibly—

“It’s you’s the baddy one to be beat, not me. It’s you’s stealed the appul, I know it is; I’ve no pennies to pay”-

The child had more to add, but breath failed him, for the passionate woman flew up to him again, once more seized him by the arm, and pulling him to her, beat him more severely than before. His spirit was quite quelled this time.

“Oh, muvver, muvver!” he screamed and sobbed,“not no more. I will be good, muvver, I will be good.”

Fur one moment the mother’s eyelids drooped, and the mother’s lips quivered as her child, her only son, uttered that solemn promise so often extorted from baby lips by those who are doing not God’s work, but Satan’s, and in Satan’s way, with passion, obstinacy, evil tempers of all kinds, might for right.

“I will be good!”

What awful desecration of the solemn promise beaten from the lips of those“whose angels do always behold the face of their Father which is in heaven,” when the promise is dragged forth, not for the glory of God, not for the furtherance of the kingdom of heaven, but for the gratification of some passing brutal instinct of rage or self-interest.

“I will be good,” sobbed Johnny Turner, and a momentary shiver passed through Mrs. Turner’s frame. She, his mother, was doing the devil’s work, and had beaten from him the promise“I will be good.” She was beating her child because he had obeyed the impulse of honesty. She was beating him that he might for the future learn to attend to her lesson of deceit.

Yes. Conscience was not absolutely dead in her soul yet. Her eyelids quivered, and her lips. But the shock was only momentary; the next instant she dropped the little arm, and pushed the sobbing child from her with an angry demand—

“You’ll be good, will you? Well, it’s to be hoped that you will, and that you’ll learn not to call your own mother a thief again. And just mind and remember this—when mother tells you to hold your tongue, you’ve got to do it. You’ve had a pretty sharp lesson this time; if you make me have to give you another, it’ll be one as you won’t have a chance to forget in a hurry.”

That last threat was unnecessary. Johnny had received a lesson now which he never forgot. The years rolled on, and Mrs. Turner forgot the whole affair; but the day came at last when she too had cause to remember it, and she rocked herself to and fro in lonely agony. That evening, when she beat her child for telling her that she had encouraged him to steal the apple, came back to her as a living picture, and the terrible words seemed to ring with trumpet-sound in her ears—

“Be sure your sin will find you out,”

CHAPTER III
JOHNNY TURNER’S POCKETS.

It has been already mentioned that Susan Turner had a couple of days’ charing a week given her by the mistress, Mrs. Reece, with whom she had been in service before her marriage.

Not many weeks after the affair with the apple she had arrived at the house in Gloucester Terrace, for one of these working days, about an hour before her kind employer descended to the kitchen regions, to give out various stores required for the household consumption.

Mrs. Reece had been busy in her store-room for some minutes, and was about to leave it, when, with sudden recollection, she said—

“Ah! by the bye, cook, I was quite forgetting about all those other groceries that you require. If you will bring me your jars, I will weigh them out at once.”

But, instead of going for the jars, cook smoothed down her clean morning apron of brown holland, and said quietly—

“Thank you, ma’am. But, if you please, ma’am, after all I’d rather not have the peel, and raisins and things, for the mincemeat, out this morning. I had forgotten, when I spoke to you about them yesterday, that this was Mrs. Turner’s day here.”

The steady, honest-faced cook spoke in a low and quiet voice; but there was, nevertheless, something in its tone that struck her mistress as peculiar enough to make her turn quickly round from her raisin-jar, and say, in some astonishment—

“Why, cook, what do you mean? What has Mrs. Turner’s coming got to do with you and the mincemeat? She does not get in your way in the kitchen so as to put you out much, I hope—does she?”

“No, ma’am,” was the blunt answer.“But she gets the things as I have to do with out of the way for me, and so I’d rather not have them when she’s by.”

Still, Mrs. Reece was not satisfied.

“Cook, I am very sorry; but, really, I do not understand. You must speak more plainly, if you wish me to do so.”

Cook hesitated a moment, and then stepped back and closed the store-room door upon herself and her mistress. But still speech seemed difficult; and, at last, Mrs. Reece asked again, almost impatiently, for an explanation of all this mystery.

“What is it, cook? What is the matter? Surely you know that you need not be afraid of speaking plainly to me!”

“It’s not you I’m afraid of, ma’am,” blurted out Ann, at last;“nor, for that matter, of anybody. But it is very unpleasant to have to say things against other people, even though it seems it’s one’s duty to do so now and again. For the things you gives out to me are in my trust, and I’ve no business to let other folks make away with them. And it’s hot that I haven’t warned her either, and let her know pretty plainly as one of these days I should tell you, if she didn’t mend her ways. But, bless you, ma’am, you might as well talk to the plate-rack.”

. Cook had eased her mind at last, and stopped to take breath; but her mistress did not look quite so strongly affected by the information as the one who bestowed it.

“And so Susan Turner has not lost her sweet tooth since she married and had her own home to look to,” said Mrs. Reece, at last, with a slight smile.“You must not mind her taking a few plums, cook, or a chip of the peel. I will allow a little more than the right weights’ to make up. She always did take a lump out of our sugar-basin when it was left about, I know, or a spoonful of the jam she had from me for the puddings or tarts. I suppose most servants do. They are all pretty much”-

But Mrs. Reece did not finish her sentence. For one instant her companion had opened her mouth with a gasp for breath, as if she were choking, and then, the next moment, with a sudden rush, the words came—

“Oh! ma’am!—I beg your pardon, but oh! ma’am, how can you say such a thing?—how can you think it? Why, there are thousands, and thousands upon thousands, of servants, ma’am; and to think as it’s put down as the most of them are pickers and stealers! Why it would be worse than in the time of Elisha and Gehazi!”

There was a moment’s pause, and then Ann went on again almost as vehemently as before.

“No. There are bad amongst our set, as there are amongst all other sets—poor, wretched, mean, contemptible creatures who can’t keep their mean, paltry fingers out of sugar-basins and jam-pots, and from lumps of sugar, and so get on to stray pennies and pocket-handkerchiefs, and such like. But there are bad and good, ma’am—leastways, to say honest. There’s them, and heaps of them, as ’ud no more pour a cup o’ tea out of your teapot, on the sly, than—than—than they’d walk up into the clergyman’s pulpit of a Sunday in service time.”

And with that strong illustration of her argument, Ann brought it to a breathless standstill Mrs. Reece answered her with grave kindness.

“I am quite sure that you are right, Ann. I spoke thoughtlessly when I uttered such a sweeping condemnation. But I am sorry to say I have seen a good deal of these petty takings, and I know Susan is rather given to them.”

The cloud on the worthy cook’s face grew heavier. “ You may well say so, ma’am. But it isn’t for Mrs. Turner, nor yet for your things neither, maybe, that I’d care so much, if it wasn’t for that poor little boy of hers being trained up, as he is, to be a picker and stealer, too. It’s real awful, ma’am, and it’s that’s what it is. And I won’t be one to help his lessons!” Mrs. Reece had grown serious enough now. Her cook looked so very much in earnest, and, in spite of the lady’s first light words, in her heart she thoroughly agreed with her servant’s sentiments.

“But still, cook,” she said, after the exchange of a few further words on the painful subject,“but still, in spite of their possible temptation to poor Susan, I must give you out the fruit for the mincemeat now, for I have just heard from your master that he wishes me to leave home with him early to-morrow morning for a few days, and I should not like its making put off till my return.”

So saying, the weighing-out was accomplished, and Mrs. Reece went about her other occupations. Amongst these occupations happened to be the mending of one of her own youngest boy’s good strong suits for Johnny Turner’s benefit.

The child came, as usual, to look for hi3 mother at a little after twelve o’clock, and then Mrs. Reece sent for him up to her room to try on the clothes. The summons came upon Mrs. Turner unexpectedly. Mrs. Reece’s eldest daughter brought it herself, with orders to take him up at once, as her mamma was waiting.

Edith found the little fellow of whom she was in quest outside the kitchen door, with his mother on her knees beside him. The woman started as the young girl came suddenly upon them, and proclaimed her errand.

“0 miss, how you frightened me, to be sure,” she exclaimed.

Edith laughed merrily.“But not Johnny, dear;

—I did not frighten you?” she asked, as she stooped, and gathered up the child in her strong young arms before the mother knew what she was going to do.

Mrs. Turner sprang to her feet, looking more put out than before.

“0 Miss Edith, you are that quick—you always was from a baby. Johnny can’t go up that fashion to your mamma, miss.”

“Why not, Susan?” asked the young maiden, pausing on the stairs, up which she had already run half-way as easily as if the child in her arms were a feather cushion.

“Why can he not go up this fashion to mamma? He is in a particularly nice fashion just now, I think—aren’t you, Johnny dear? And his hands and face are as clean as mamma’s pet copper teakettle.”

And so saying, Edith danced on upwards, singing a nursery rhyme as blythe as a bee, or as the canary uttering its glee in the dining-room.

But Susan was in no humour for singing nursery rhymes. She felt desperate. She would have had the very greatest satisfaction that minute in giving Miss Edith a hearty slap, as reward for her youthful quickness and agility. Of course she could have demanded her child back again; but what would have been the good of that, as far as her present motives were concerned, seeing that of course Miss Edith would stand by waiting for him?

“Miss Edith, stop—stop one minute, at any rate,” exclaimed the worried woman at last, at her wits-end what to do.“I must just put his collar straight.”

She ran up the steps after the happy young pair as she spoke, gave a quick, careless twitch to the collar, and then said hastily—

“ Move your hand, my lambie. Let mother turn out these grubby little untidy pockets, there’s a lambie.”

But, alas! for her ease, her last effort was unsuccessful. Johnny proved himself anything but a patient lamb at that suggestion of turning out his pockets. He clutched at the one nearest to his mother with a tighter grip than ever, and burst into a sudden roar of mingled distress and indignation—“Don’t, muvver! My pockets isn’t grubby an’ untidy. They’s full ov good fings. Miss Edif, run away twickly.”

“There, Susan, you hear my orders,” said the young girl, laughing.“I feel obliged to obey them.” And suiting the action to her words, she folded her arms more closely round the little fellow, and ran up to her mamma, without awaiting further remonstrances or petitions from Mrs. Turner, who had only too good reasons for wishing to keep her child and his pockets from her employer’s eyes just then.

Mrs. Reece’s cook was most perfectly justified in her imputations on the charwoman’s habit of picking. She could never keep her fingers away from anything. Or, rather, I am ashamed to see that I have fallen into the use of the mischievous cant phrase of the day, and have written,“She could never keep her fingers away,” when I should have written,“She would never.”

And, since her kind and generous mistress had given her leave to have her child so much at the house during her weekly days’ charing, she fouud additional reasons for her miserable, paltry thefts.

“Picking and stealing,” we say;. but the words have a distinction without a difference. Picking is stealing. However, to continue.

Edith Reece ran on to her mamma’s room, and deposited Johnny, safe and smiling, on the floor.

“There, mamma, do you want to buy a wee, fat piggy?” she asked, merrily.“His mother cried,

‘Wee, wee, wee,’ after him; so if you think of cooking him for supper, I think you had better be quick.”

“Very well,” answered Mrs. Reece, smiling back in sympathy at the two bright faces before her. “Come here, little piggy, and let me take your jacket off. I think I should like best to cook you in this brown one.”

The brown one had such bright brass buttons on it that for the moment they quite banished from Johnny’s mind the recollection of what made his own jacket the more precious to him, and he came forward eagerly to have the exchange made, doing his own best to help in the business of getting out of the old one. He ended by taking it in his chubby hands, and exclaiming—

“There, ugly old fin!” as he gave it a toss up in the air.

He had scarcely done so when the light suddenly died out of his blue eyes, and the merry shout died on his lips. He looked terrified. Not the jacket only, but raisins, peel, almonds, and a nutmeg fell pell-mell at the feet of the little group. Mrs. Reece gazed at the articles with eyes that showed almost as much fear as did the little boy’s. Edith stared at them in the greatest astonishment, and said wonderingly—

“What a very queer place for Susan to choose to put her pudding things—and not at all nice.”

“No,” assented Mrs. Reece, slowly, and with a heavy sigh—“no, not at all nice.”

Johnny recalled her to herself. He slipped a very trembling little hand in hers, and whispered earnestly—

“You won’t tell muvver, will you?”

“What—tell mother what—my poor, poor little child?” asked Mrs. Reece, in a tone so sad that the child looked still more anxious as he answered—“You won’t tell muvver as you’ve seen these tings? She told me not to let you, nor cook, nor nobodies fall, see ’em, nor know nuffin about ’em; and oh, she’ll beat me bad if she knows as you have see’d ’em all!”

“Beat you!” said Edith in a voice divided between incredulity and indignation.“Oh, she would not beat you for that, Johnny.”

Johnny turned and looked up at her with a grave nod of his head.“But she would though; she beat me two times, and beated and beated me, when I ony told old Mittis Barter as she’d let me take that appul from the shop.”

“What apple?” asked Edith, in surprise, quickly. But her mother checked her still more quickly.“Hush, my dear, you must not ask the child what his mother has told him not to tell. Go down now, and ask Mrs. Turner to step up here to me a minute, and then you can go to your practising, dear.”

Mrs. Reece had no desire to put the poor woman to shame by having witnesses by, while she accused her of the discovered sin which, for her own conscience sake, she no longer dared pass over. But she might have spared her sympathy on the score of shame for Susan Turner. The young woman’s only feeling of shame was that she had managed so clumsily as to let her pickings get detected. The long, anxious, tender pleadings and admonitions of her kind and grieved mistress made no more impression upon her, as she herself contemptuously remarked, as she went back to her charing, than water on a duck’s back.

“A parcel of pack and rubbish,” she muttered scornfully,“about a half-pennyworth of raisins. I’ll buy them a pen’orth another day, the stingy things, if they’re so mighty hard up for them. Faugh, it’s all meanness, that’s what it is.”

But for all that, Susan knew that it was not meanness, nor stinginess, that prompted the sad reproofs. The clothes just given to her child would have served Willie Reece for many a long day yet, if Mrs. Reece had not decided that they would make comfortable winter garments for little Johnny; and the meals given to the child every week were worth a great deal more than the odds and ends taken secretly here and there, which the woman tried to still her conscience by scornfully declaring were“mean ha’porths of things grudged to the poor child.”

“You little goose, you,” she said angrily that night, and pushing him so roughly before her into the room, when they reached home, that he fell and cut his forehead against the table.“You little goosey, you. You’ll be a regular old woman when you grow up, with that blabbing tongue of yours. Well, you’ve lost your pudding through it this time, and serve you right, for I’m not a-going to buy raisins and nutmegs for you, I can tell you, when you can’t take care of those you’ve got, you little idiot of a chatterer.”

“But—but, muvver—I—I,” sobbed Johnny, crying bitterly with pain, fear, and disappointment at the loss of the promised pudding.“I—I—didn’t tell nuffin, not this time, of your—your takin’ the fings. They tolded of theirselyes by tumbling out of mine pockets.”

“Well, well, there, hold your tongue, and come here,” said Mrs Turner, who by this time nad lighted her lamp and caught sight of her child’s bleeding face. The spectacle quieted her down a good deal. She spoke less angrily.

“Leave off blubbering. It’s done now, and can’t be helped, so it’s no use making any more fuss about it this time. Come here, and let mother see what’s happened to your forehead.”

And the sight of the great cut and the fast-flowing blood effectually driving out all her feelings of rancour against her own little one, the mother soon had his head bathed and bandaged, and himself soothed, and falling asleep in her arms—a sweet little pale face, the long dark lashes drooping over the slowly closing eyes, and the soft-haired head pressed against her bosom.

“Mother’s own little lamb!” she murmured softly. But alas, there was no prayer on her lips, no faintest sigh in her heart that he might be numbered also amongst the lambs of the fold of God.

Poor little Johnny! His own mother robbing him of his inheritance; his own mother giving him over into Satan’s clutches! It is a black, dismal picture, but a true one.

Johnny Turner was not an apt pupil for his mother’s lessons. He had in him too much of his fathers sturdy spirit and brave honesty for that; •but the heart is naturally prone to evil, and ready to follow evil. The child, who with wise and wholesome training would have grown into a brave and noble boy, into an upright man, deteriorated in character day by day.

At length the time came when Mrs. Reece had to withdraw her permission to his mother for him to come to the Terrace between school-hours, on the days she worked there. His example had become a bad one for her own children. Toys, halfpence, and sweets, perpetually were lost by their rightful owners when little Johnny Turner had been up in the nursery, and although he was learning a cunning not natural to him, in hiding his petty thefts, no one in the house was long in doubt as to whose hands had purloined the missing articles.

“I only wish that Johnny would bring something with him worth taking,” muttered little Willy Reece one morning, with crimson cheeks and flashing eyes.

Mrs. Reece heard the mutter with shocked ears, and drew her child to her side.“Do you mean that if lie did, my Willy would turn thief?” she asked in tones of deep distress.

The child’s cheeks flushed still more deeply.“No, then, mamma. Only—I did wish to—to—pay him out.”

Mrs. Reece tried warnings and entreaties with Johnny’s mother. But all was in vain. The mother scolded her boy, certainly—scolded him for being found out; for being“clumsy and thick-headed.”

CHAPTER IV
STANDING TREAT ON TWO SHILLINGS A WEEK.

Bounding footsteps on the stairs, a quickly-turned door-handle, and an eager shout of“Mamma— Edith!” unmistakably proclaimed Willy Reece’s presence in the house, and in his mother’s sitting-room.

It was no longer a“little Willy,” promoted from an old brown knickerbocker suit to a new one, who stood there panting with a good scamper home from the post-office, and with his budget of news picked up on the way.

Some ten years had passed since Johnny Turner’s pockets had emptied themselves of their unlawful contents of peel and almonds, and other matters of a similar kind And, with the years, both the boys had grown from little ones into fine tall lads of fifteen.

Willy Reece looked a particularly pleasant specimen of healthy, open-hearted boyhood, as he stood there before his mother, with his bright eyes, and his cheeks flushed with air and exercise.

“0 mamma,” he repeated once more, with laughing eagerness,“who do you think I have met out of doors, between this and the post-office?”

Mrs. Reece looked at her son with a smile.“The ‘Grand Panjandrum’ himself, it might be safe to suppose, from your excitement,” she answered with a laugh.

Edith found time to raise her eyes, and laugh also, in spite of being occupied in the important business of examining the fashions of some dresses, that had just been sent home as part of her wedding trousseau.

But Willy himself began to take the matter more seriously—

“Well,” he said,“I have not exactly seen the ‘Panjandrum/ certainly; but, if you talk of ‘grand/ I should think so, indeed. If John Turner isn’t the ‘Grand Panjandrum ’ this morning, he certainly does not think himself the ‘Little Button at Top.’ I can tell you. Such a swell as he is, you never saw.”

And there young Reece’s feelings appeared to be too much for him. At any rate they had reduced him to breathlessness. Mrs. Reece took advantage of the pause to ask if Turner were alone.

“Oh, no,” was the answer. -‘I will say that Tor him. Stuck-up little id”-

“Willy, my boy, Willy,” came the gentle, warning Voice.

“Well, mamma, yes. I beg your pardon. I know it’s wrong. But really I do wish you’d seen him, and you must have confessed that he looked conceited enough to deserve some hard names. He had a walking-stick, of all things; and to see the way he flourished it—Ugh!”

Mrs. Reece laid her hand on her son’s arm.

‘‘Willy, dear.” There was no reproach in the words, only in the anxious tones.“Willy, dear, I thought you had something to say for him, had you not?”

Reece looked puzzled for a moment. He had forgotten that there could be anything to say in favour of this object of his boyish dislike and contempt. Edith helped his memory.

“About his mother, Will, wasn’t it?”

“Oh! ah! I remember.” And his face brightened. “Yes, that’s it. And I suppose there must be good of some sort even in that fellow, for he seemed as pleased as Punch at being with his mother, and as careful of her when they came to the crossing, in spite of his fine airs and his fine clothes, as—as-” and Willy’s voice dropped to a half-whisper—” as I could be of you, dear old mums.’’

And, bending forward as he spoke, the boy put his arms round his mother’s neck and kissed her.

The next instant he made amends to himself and his boy’s shyness for this ebullition of feeling by starting off to the other end of the room, and shouting, in a pretended aside, in his sister’s ear—

“Or as poor, silly old Frank could be of you.”

He got a pinch for his pains, and then Mrs. Reece’s eldest boy Guy came to say that their father was ready, and the two brothers and Mr. Reece made the most of the beautiful August Bank-holiday in a long walk to Richmond.

The Turners had set out to spend theirs together at the Crystal Palace, and it was not until they were quietly seated in a railway carriage, on the way to Sydenham, that Mrs. Turner found time and thought to really take in the full extent of her son’s magnificence. It had a very different effect upon her to what it had produced upon Willy Reece. She looked at him from head to foot, and from foot to head again, as if she could never be satisfied with looking, and her smiles grew more beaming every moment.

As far as John Turner’s own personal appearance was concerned the mother’s sigh of full contentment was amply justified. He had kept the promise of his childhood so far, and was a well-grown, handsome youth, very pleasant to look at, but for the furtive, keen look in his eyes, which had taken the place of the bright, frank gaze which had made them so beautiful in expression in his early years. But that small item was of very little account to his mother, or rather it was a matter for secret congratulation.

“Your head’s grown a good deal longer than it was when you were a little one,” was a remark she had made to him more than once of late, in tones of well-contented admiration.

As she paused once and again, now, during their holiday to contemplate him from top to toe, she felt a stronger conviction than ever that she had succeeded in tutoring him into being one of the longheaded ones of the world. He earned seven shillings a week as errand-boy at a butterman’s; five shillings she took as part-payment of his board, and the other two shillings he had to make cover, as well as he could, the expenses of boots and clothes.

“But,” Susan Turner mentally decided,“he must have gone to a very wonderful tailor, bootmaker, hatter, if he had purchased the attire he was then wearing out of his savings, during his nine months of paid work.”

Willy Reece called him in schoolboy phrase—“a swell.” His mother said, with delighted smiles—“I declare, Johnny, that you’re quite the gentleman.”

Her son’s face flushed with satisfaction.

“Well, mother, and why not? I’m sure that you look quite the lady. And, mother-”

“Yes, Johnny?” rather quickly and sharply. Mrs. Turner had a momentary fear that her boy was going to give her some private intimation as to how he managed to buy those clothes, and she felt that she should enjoy her holiday better without the confidence. He was a very clever fellow to have contrived to get them, and she was quite proud of him, but she did not wish to hear any particulars.

It was quite as well that he should learn to keep his own counsel on some matters, even where his own mother was concerned.

But she need have had no fears. The son’s conscience was growing as dull as the mother’s. There was something which he considered, of much more importance on his mind just then, than how he got the money to buy things equally unfitted to his purse and position. He was very nearly fifteen, and not only very nearly, but quite the man in his own estimation, and he had the serious request to make to his mother, that from that morning forth she would cease to address him by the childish title of Johnny.

“Very well—John—” said his mother obediently, •but smiling at the same time. “But—John—you won’t be very hard on me if I forget, once and again/ and say John-”

Mrs. Turner was interrupted by a sharp, quick pressure of her arm, and a hurried, low,“Hush, mother,” as he pulled her on more quickly for some yards, before he ventured to add, with a quick look round to see there were no other unwelcome listeners in sight;

“Oh, mother, I’ve had a fine escape. Indeed, indeed, you must never, not even once and again, call me that silly name. If only Jim Bennet had heard you!—and he was close upon us when I stopped you.”

Mrs. Turner looked rather scornful.“Jim Bennet, indeed! My word, lad. Fine cause you have to care what Jim Bennet, or the like of such as him, hears or doesn’t hear. Why, for all he’s a couple of years older, he isn’t a patch upon you, laddie.”

John drew himself up complacently.“No, mother, I’d be sorry to be such a duffer as he is. All the same he got a laugh at me the other day, through you.”

Susan stared.“A laugh—and through me! How was that?”

“Well, you see,” John began with a slight stammer,“the fact is, mother, a few mornings ago, a lot of the boys were playing chuck-farthing, and I put my basket down just for a minute to have a turn, and managed in no time to clear them all out And Jim was wild.”

Susan laughed.“No doubt of it So he was when you cleared him out of his marbles, many a good long year ago. But fancy his waiting about to play. I should have thought he was much too long-faced for that!”

John shrugged his shoulders.“Oh! so he is. He wasn’t playing. Only he chose to interfere.. And when I wouldn’t give up my winnings he went off at last, shouting out—‘Oh! well, never mind, leave Baby Johnny alone. His mother always calls him Baby Johnny! ’ I said-”

“How dared he!” interrupted Mrs. Turner, angrily. “And it wasn’t anyways true, neither, for I never did call you ‘baby,’ even when you was one.”

“No,” continued John,“so I said. But I said that you hadn’t called me Johnny neither, not for years. And he laughed.”

“Laughed, did he?” ejaculated the mother.“I wish I’d been by to box his ears well for him—that I do. He’s a downright good-for-nought, that Bennet is.”“Well no, mother, he isn’t that,” corrected the boy with a touch of generosity.“But all the same I don’t want him to find out that he really was right about how you call me. So you’ll be careful, won’t you? and especially to-day, when he may be upon us any moment, and anywhere.”

And then they changed the subject. John bought a programme of the day’s amusements, and a few minutes later the mother and son were .two of a stream of people crowding out to the grounds, to be present at some athletic sports, which were amongst the long list of offered entertainments. A gentleman stood looking after the Turners for some moments, lather sadly.

If only there had been no black cloud behind, no shame of wrong-doing, none of the blight of evil and hardness, how pleasant it would have been to see that good-looking young mother and her fine young son enjoying their day together with such cheerfulness and high spirits. But the stranger, Mr. King, had unavoidably heard some of their late conversation, and he sighed as he looked after them, and murmured, sadly—

“A lie owned to by the boy’s lips, and no word of reproof or sorrow from the mother’s! Alas! poor” mother, and poor boy!”

But, although Mr. King pitied, many another envied the gay pair. Many a poor woman thought it a delightful sight to see that son treating his, mother to dainties out of a purse well enough filled with shillings. Only good old Mrs. Barker wondered, when she heard the tale, if it were possible to believe that the boy had really earned all the money he had spent so freely.

Even Mrs. Turner herself grew somewhat startled at last, when she discovered, how very much more full that purse was than she had any right to expect. She did whisper a caution once during the course of the afternoon, when he announced his determination that they should both have ices before thinking about tea.

“Do the thing thoroughly for once in our lives, you know, mother.”

“It seems you mean to, at any rate,” said Mrs. Turner, laughing.“And you’ve a right, that your mother ain’t a’goin’ to gainsay, to spend your own money as you choose. But, laddie”-and she lowered her voice, and cast a cautious glance around before she continued.

“Laddie, you do seem to have a good deal. Do be careful.”

John looked round quickly, and gave his mother a sharp, keen glance.“All right,” he said with a short laugh. Then he drew her forward quickly to a just-vacated seat at the refreshment counter, and gave his order for ices as a boy ran past them with a pile of buns.

“Drop your handkerchief, mother,” muttered John the next instant. And almost as soon as he had uttered the words, Mrs. Turner said, in a tone of vexation,

“Dear me t How awkward I am to-day. There’s my glove gone now, and my handkerchief. Pick them up, John, there’s a good boy. Your back’s younger than mine.”

And John picked them up, and something besides which he was hurriedly putting into his pocket when the boy with the buns, darting back, caught a glimpse of the object and exclaimed,

“Oh, give that to me. It’s mine. I just dropped it.”

“Dropped what—my handkerchief?” asked Mrs. Turner, contemptuously.

“No, ma’am,” civilly.“My new knife, which that boy has put into his pocket.”

“Well I never! Do you suppose that no one has got a knife but yourself, my lad?” was the retort.“That boy, as you call him, is my son, and he’s got plenty of knives of his own without wanting yours.”

“All the same, he has taken mine,” said the stranger, half-choking with scarcely kept-down tears.

A gentleman stepped forward.“What is it, Bennett?”

The hoy’s face brightened eagerly.“Oh, please, Mr. King, the beautiful knife you gave me. I dropped it a minute ago, and this boy picked it up.”

“Then, of course, he will return it to you,” was the grave rejoinder.

“If that was a true tale, perhaps he might,” broke in Mrs. Turner.“But I say my son has got his own knife, and he’s going to keep it And I’d like to know who’s to take one word against the other!”

There was a moment’s pause. Then Mr. King said, in a low, quiet voice,“This boy, Bennett, is called Charlie by his mother. He has never asked her to pretend that she calls him Charles. I have known him all his life. I have never known him tell a lie. I take his word.”

The cheeks of John and Mrs. Turner were dyed crimson, and again there was a short silence.

“Describe that knife in your pocket, my boy,” said Mr. King, at last, addressing John.“And then Bennett shall describe it, and whoever describes it rightly shall have it.”

“A buckhorn handle and four blades,” muttered John, who had been feeling it over since he hid it away.

“Buckhorn handle, two blades, button-hook, and a gimlet for my skates,” exclaimed Charles Bennett, excitedly.

‘. Mr. King patted his shoulder.“All right, Bennett.

And, if that lad’s mother will have the goodness to look, she will see that you have described your own property correctly.”

As it was very evident that the gentleman intended to see the knife restored to its lawful owner, whatever measures he had to take for the purpose, John now sulkily gave it up.

“Of course I’d have given it before, if I’d known ’twas his.’

“That’s right, my lad,” said Mr. King, with earnest kindness,“and always be sure that truth and honesty are the best policy/’

But Mrs. Turner added,“If you’d only been more cautious with that blabbing tongue of yours, you’d have had the knife, and no lecture/’

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST CRIME.

Four o’clock on a hot August day—three days after the bank-holiday mentioned in our last chapter, when Mrs. Turner was so proud of her boy’s smart appearance, and so complacently ready to feast on the good things he provided out of funds whose source she took care not to inquire.

Three days, or nearly three days, had passed by since that luxurious holiday, and the weather had been certainly very trying to many people, but Mrs. Turner felt it very little. She took things easily, stayed indoors nearly all day, and took a quiet turn in the park, or round the squares at sundown.

John Turner felt the heat little more than his mother, for the hours were easy, and the work light, this month, at his employer’s. Most of the customers were out of town, and chance buyers were few. The toils or trials of these days had certainly not been great enough yet to dim the remembered pleasure of the holiday.

Before Johnny left that morning he had a quiet look in the drawer where lay, in all their glory, the stylish hat, the rich, blue silk cravat, and the elegant, silver-banded walking-cane.

An hour or so later his mother, in her turn, opened the drawer, and feasted her eyes on her child’s extravagant articles of attire.

“He looked quite the young gentleman in them, and that I do declare,” she murmured, with a triumphant smile shining in her eyes.

She forgot, what many another poor, silly creature forgets—that Jesus Christ was the truest gentleman that ever lived on earth. That the word“gentleman” signifies one who is true and pure in thought, and honest in word and deed. A tailor’s dummy, a milliner’s wax doll, are clothed in the most sumptuous garments, but nevertheless they are no more a lady, or a gentleman, in their costly raiment, than without it. How can outward show have anything to do with the matter?

Think for yourselves, my readers, what can clothes have to do with making anyone a gentleman? And as for clothes making a lady, why the word is derived from two old Saxon ones, signifying the bread-keeper or bread-guardian. There can truly be little need to have fine clothes in order to be a wise and prudent keeper of the bread, guardian of the family larder, or of the master’s or mistress’s goods committed to one’s charge. No; fine clothes have often made thieves, but they never yet made a lady or gentleman.

Mrs. Turner stood with a smiling face, looking at her boy’s useless possessions. How he came by the money to buy them she did not care to think.

“Do good unto thyself, and men will speak well of thee,” she murmured, with a light laugh.“There! that is quite after Mother Barker’s own heart, I’m sure. I’ve actually quoted a text, and one that I see the sense of too.”

Poor, weak, sinning mother. She could laugh now in her blindness and presumption; but the time was rapidly drawing close when she should feel as if she and laughter had parted company for ever.

The day wore on, lightly, easily. Mrs. Turner had her dinner, and went down-stairs to do a little neighbourly tidying, in a leisurely fashion, for old Mrs. Barker, and to have a chat When she returned to her own room, she sat down to finish stitching the wrist-bands of a couple of fine linen-fronted shirts she was making for Johnny. She meant to get one of them done for him to wear to Richmond with her on Sunday.

“Do the lad a precious sight more good to get a breath of fresh air,” she murmured, confidently, than to be mewed up half the day in a stuffy old’ church, and nodding, while the clergyman preaches what he doesn’t care to listen to any more than his mother does.”

She stitched on, and thought on her blind human thoughts, and the hands of the clock moved on, and at last it struck four.

The house had been very quiet for some time. It might have been midnight for all the movement to be heard in it. The very flies had found the heat too much for them, and had gone to sleep on the window curtain.

Everything around the worker spoke of drowsy comfort. Her ears caught no re-echo of the words —“Poor short-sighted creature”—spoken by worthy;

Alec Duncan nearly ten years ago. Nor did her heart.

But although the prosperous-looking, self-satisfied woman caught no echo from the past, she was suddenly startled by unexpected sounds falling upon her ears in the present.

Rapid steps flying, tearing up the stairs. Steps— that she would have known for Johnny’s even if the fact that they were the only occupants of that topmost floor had not assured her that it must be her boy and none other—coming to her in that wild haste.

A cold chill came over her that hot, August day— a foreboding of ill. Those steps sounded to her ears like hunted steps. She stood up, clutching at the back of the chair, and with her work fallen at her feet.

The next instant the door opened, and John stood there, white and wild.

“Quite the gentleman,” his mother had called him but a few days since.

Now, a more fitting simile would have been, a miserable fox run to earth, and with the dogs fastened to his throat.

CHAPTER VI
DAWNING REMORSE.

“Mother!“ gasped a breathless, wild-eyed lad. Then he turned, and shat the door, and locked it“John! What is it?” breathed, rather than spoke, Susan Turner.

She still stood, clutching at the chair-hack for support, as she had grasped it when the sound of those flying steps first fell upon her ears. And the terror in her eyes reflected that in her son’s.

“Oh! Johnnie!” she whispered between pale lips,“what is it? I warned you; I told you to be careful!”

The boy drew in breath, and power of speech, with another of those hard, painful gasps. “Careful!” he repeated with bitter scorn.“Yes, mother, you’ve always told me to be careful, and taught me to be careful in the Devil’s own way.”

The mother quivered through her whole frame, as the biting words were uttered; but the lad went on, unheeding aught but his own misery-

“And now, if you can’t be careful, somehow, to get that cane and scarf, and hat, and new boots of mine out of the way, within ten minutes, I shall.probably spend the night locked up carefully enough in jail.”

The mother shivered again. Before, it had been as much with sudden anger as with dismay; but John’s last significant words had once more called up all her heaviest fears, and a heavy and dark dismay reigned alone. She lifted her hands, and held them out with an attitude of instinctive helplessness.

“How shall I get them out of the way, Johnnie— so soon? Where shall I hide them?” she whispered hoarsely.>

At this appeal the boy’s cheeks grew pale. He had never known his mother fail in her resources before. He looked at her for a moment, then—“Burn them,” he said shortly, with a boy’s thoughtlessness.

The next moment his eyes followed his mother’s to the empty August grate. He wrung his hands.

“Oh! mother, do something with them—you must! One of the customers has been to Mr. Chesman’s this morning, while I was out with the basket. And they’ve been comparing a bill she paid me with the book. She’s one of those ladies who don’t generally give much heed to their bills. I’d heard that, and it was so easy to turn the 2 pounds into a 3.”

Mrs. Turner came nearer to him. “Yes, Johnny,” she whispered with white lips.“ Yes, and then?”

“And then, mother, she actually took it into her head to consider about that bill in particular, and to search out the one with the items on it Off she comes to the shop, and there’s a hunt, and a finding out that the amount was only what she expected it should be.

“When I got back to the place I was called in to the inner room, and told about the affair, and called a—a-” There he broke off abruptly, paused a moment, and added—“Of course I said I wasn’t”

“Yes, of course,” assented Mrs. Turner slowly.

She was beginning to collect her thoughts and her energies again.“What else did you say, John? That wasn’t all—was it?”

Alas! it was not all. John Turner had not been so overwhelmed with shame and misery, at the imminence of detection, as to shun piling falsehoods on to theft.

“No, mother,” he said sullenly.“That was not all. I told them that whatever the lady had paid me I had paid into the till, and if there were any mistakes they had to lie at the door of the clerk who made out the bills—not at mine. But that only set Mr. Chesman on counting the money in the till, and reckoning what he’d paid into the bank. And-”

“And,” repeated his mother quickly.“Go on, Johnny.”

“And it was found a pound short, and—arid-more besides.”

Young Turner’s face was paler than ever, as he hurriedly told the rest he had to tell. His master had risen from his books at last, and sternly ordered him off to carry certain goods, just chosen, to some distance, and he had started to obey when one of the shopmen had slipped out after him.

“Turner—hi!—you’ve left the eggs.”

Turner came back heavily.“Where are the things?”

“Here” said the young man, as he hid a bagful in the basket.“But you’d better ask if they are wanted before you leave them. And, Turner And the speaker dropped his voice to a hurried^ but significant whisper.“If there’s anything with an extravagant look about it at your home, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you if your mother got a hint within the next quarter of an hour to hide it. Mr. Chesman’s thinking of taking a visitor there.”

As he uttered the last word of warning the man slipped back into the shop, leaving his companion standing on the pavement, oppressed with a feeling of more utter, helpless misery than before. At last he suddenly picked up the basket again, thrust it inside the shop once more, and ran off as if he already heard the policeman at his heels.

“And so,” he added drearily, and with his eyes fixed upon the fireless grate—“and so, mother, I came here.”

“And right too,” said Mrs. Turner, more calmly than she had hitherto spoken.“But as for burning your things, or hiding them, I’m much obliged for the warning, but I shall do nothing of the sort.”

John stared. His mother seemed to be losing her fear for him, but he could not imagine on what grounds. She answered his look with a short, significant laugh.

“What need for you, my son, to be afraid of anyone finding out what a good mother I am to my only child? I am not a pauper. If I like to dress you nicely, I suppose there’s no law to prevent me. Don’t forget that, John; it’s I, you are to remember, not you, who bought your clothes. And it was I, and not you, who chose that for once in our lives we should have a good treat at the Palace.”

Mrs. Turner nodded her head complacently at her own cleverness, and added—

“Yes, my son. Just you mind, whatever they say, that you keep to that story. But there—perhaps .you’d best say nothing at all. You’ve come to your mother, folks will see, if they come after you. And it’s the right and fitting thing as a child should do in his troubles. And so I shall be pretty quick to tell them, you may be bound. You keep a still tongue in your head, and your wits about you, and I’ll bring you off right enough, never fear.”

John began to breathe more freely.“But the walking-stick, mother. It’s real silver on the handle. Mightn’t it be best to get that away?”

“Nonsense,” was the retort.“I tell you, if they can’t prove anything against you, except as by going on what you’ve been spending, they won’t make much by that move—the mean, spying things.”

And she tossed her head with flashing eyes, and began to feel bold enough, once more, to face anything and any one.

So blinded had poor Susan’s mind become, so distorted her conscience, that the people who had been robbed, and who would fain get back their own, were“mean, spying things;” but her child and she, the thief and the sharer in the theft, were injured, wickedly-used individuals, who had a right to use every means imaginable to extricate themselves from misfortune.

The boy, in his new and unexpected fear, and dreaded danger of terrible exposure, had begun to awaken to some sort of conscience, cowardly though it might be—to some sort of penitence, even though it grew but out of feelings of self-interest.

His mother’s words killed the faint spark. Once more she robbed him of the faint hold he was taking on saving grace. Even now he might have been rescued from a career of crime, dragged out of the mire of sin, and his own mother’s hand thrust him back again. But,“As a man soweth, so shall he reap.”

CHAPTER VII
ON THE DOORSTEP.

Edith Reece was practising, or, rather, she was indulging in a good many happy day-dreams, and her fingers were moving over the piano-keys in sympathy.

She was to he married to Mr. Frank King a fortnight hence, and the young clergyman had won her deepest esteem, as well as her heartfelt love.

She had every right to have pleasant dreams, and to indulge in the strongest hopes of future happiness. But her dreams were to be interrupted. The door opened, and Willy’s bright face appeared.

“Edie, there’s Charlie Bennett in the hall. He says he’s come with a message to you from Frank. I told Jane I’d tell you.”

“Thanks,” said Edith, springing up from the music-stool with the brisk readiness of her childhood’s days. Letters and messages were perpetually passing between the pair; but there was little of the nature of ordinary billets-doux in the letters, and certainly nothing of lovers’ words in the messages.

“I wonder,” said Willy, in mischievous allusion to some of these said past messages,“I wonder whether it’s a broken-down cab-horse or the blind beggar of Bethnal Green that you are to be sent to look after now.”

“Asked to stay at home and give a lecture on impudence, more likely,” was the laughing retort.

And Miss Reece ran past her brother, and down the stairs, as if the almost Indian heat of the day were a matter of much lest account to her than to the flies in Mrs. Turner’s sitting-room.

“Come in here, Charlie,” she said, kindly, leading the way into a little side-room off the hall.“Is it anything that I can do for you that you have come about?”

“Oh! no, miss,” said the boy, eagerly.“Please don’t think as I’d let you be troubled for me, and after all you and Mr. King have done for me, too. Look, miss, you haven’t seen the last.”

And by way of completion of his sentence, he put his hand in his pocket as he spoke, and drew forth the two-bladed knife, with the button-hook and gimlet, which John Turner had picked up in the Crystal Palace three days before, and tried to keep.

Charlie graphically narrated the history of the gift, its loss, and its restoration.

“What a shame of that boy to try to keep it!” said Edith, indignantly.“Do you know who he is?”

“No,” answered Charlie, “ and don’t want to, neither, Miss Reece. But I think I must have seen him about somewhere before. I thought I remembered his face. But, please, miss, it is about old Mrs. Barker as Mr. King sent me to you.”

Edith gave a slight start, and coloured.

She had actually for a moment forgotten that her lover had sent her a message.

“Ah! yes,” she said,“of course. About Mrs Barker, you say, Charlie? I hope she is not ill—is she? I saw her only three days ago.”

“Yes, miss, and it was after that—the day after— she slipped on a piece of orange-peel on the pavement, and hurt herself pretty bad, I believe. And Mr. King said maybe you’d have time to sit with her a bit this afternoon, and perhaps Mrs. Reece might send her something.”

“Poor.dear old b6dy!” ejaculated Edith, with affectionate sympathy.“Yes, of course we will. Was that all, Charlie?”

“Yes, miss, that was all,” came the answer, as Charlie ducked his head by way of farewell, and stepped out of the room. But he paused a moment in the hall to think, and then turned back to say—

“Yes, miss, that was all, excepting for only as I were to say too, Mr. King said he’d be looking round here himself about eight o’clock.”

“Oh! thank you,” said Miss Edith Reece, and as the hall-door shut after Charlie Bennet, Willy Reece slid down the banisters, almost into his sister’s arms. He looked up mischievously into her face—

“Edith, my dear, when I carry messages between a young man and his young woman, I’ll give the most important piece first.”

“And when I imitate Hood, and write a poem about ‘A little vulgar boy,’ I’ll take you for my model. Go and ask mamma, please, if I may have a little soup or arrowroot, or something, to take to poor old Mrs. Barker. She has fallen in the street and hurt herself. And, Willy dear, do leave off sliding down the banisters, please. I get so frightened for you sometimes when I see you do it.”

She leant forward and kissed her young brother rather more earnestly than she might have done a few months since. There would be some pang3 for her in leaving her first home, even though she did it of her own free will.

But Edith Reece soon cheered up again. She was one of those who always look on the bright side of things when there is a bright side visible. And when there is not they hunt for it.

The search is worth making, for it is one that is bound to be rewarded. If nothing else is found, there are always the peace of God and the love of Jesus Christ, as silver linings for the heaviest clouds that ever lowered over any of God’s trembling creatures.

Susan Turner always thought the search worth making too. But the brightness she found was that of the will-o’-the-wisp, and it led her into the quagmire. However, to return to the young Reeces for the minute.

These were holiday weeks for Willy just now, and, as Guy and his two younger sisters had gone off to the National Gallery together, Will was glad enough to“do Neddy,” as he called it, for his eldest sister. In other words, to carry the basketful of“kitchen physic,” provided by Mrs. Reece, as far as Mrs. Barker’s place of abode. He knew the house well enough; he had many a time already been to the door with messages or notes from his mother to Susan Turner.

But in all the times he had been there, he had never before seen the doorstep so occupied as it was just now. The brother and sister had scarcely turned into little Crescent Place, when Will stopped short, and laid his disengaged hand on his sister’s arm, with a short, sharp exclamation—

“Hullo, Eds!”

Edith looked round at him with a smile.“I thought Frank told you that he considered ‘Eds’ a particularly hideous abbreviation of my name?”“Ah!” was the calm rejoinder.“But you forget that he added it might be on that account I considered it peculiarly suited to my mouth. And I do. But, Eds, rubbish apart, did you see what one of those men was who just went in there?”

“No,” said Edith, questioningly, and startled into gravity by Willy’s grave tones.“What men do you mean, Will?—and went in where? I was looking at those children playing at school on the doorstep.”“Umph!” ejaculated Will, with a slight accent of manly contempt.“Just like girls, and I was looking straight on ahead to where we are going.”

“Yes; well, Willy, go on,” said Edith, with justifiable impatience.“How teasing you are! You looked on towards the house Mrs. Barker lodges in, I suppose you mean. And what did you gain by your looking?”

“Information,” answered Will, sedately.“I saw two men on the doorstep. One of them was Mr. Chesman, the butterman, just out of Bishop’s Road, and the other was a policeman, and they’ve gone in.”

CHAPTER VIII
SUSAN TURNER TRIUMPHANT.

“You’ve come to your mother in your trouble; and il’s right and fitting that you should, and I shall be pretty quick to tell folks so.”

That was the boast Susan Turner uttered, just about the same minute that Willy Reece astonished his sister by his sudden pause on the narrow pavement of Little Crescent Street.

John was looking at his mother with eyes that implored her, more eloquently than his tongue, to save him from disgrace and punishment, and she was very soon called upon to fulfil her boast.

Even while Mrs. Turner was speaking, and the faint colour of reviving hope was returning to Johnnie’s cheeks, steps were once more heard on the stairs.

This time they were not flying steps urged on by dire fear, but firm, deliberate ones. More than one pair of feet could be heard too, and once more the tinge of red faded from the boy’s face, leaving it an ashy paleness.

His mother glanced at him with troubled impatience.“Pluck up your courage, lad,” she muttered.

“Tour hangdog looks else will be enough to betray you, do what I may.”

But cowed as John Turner might be, the minute’s spasm of terror had utterly passed away from his mother’s face, and had left her cool, calm, and fiercely resolute. When the steps finally paused outside her room, and there was a heavy, imperative thump on the door, there was not the slightest trace of tremor or hesitation in the voice that instantly answered—

“Who’s there? Come in.”

The permission thus accorded was immediately accepted, and two men entered. One of them Mrs. Turner recognised, and deigned to salute with a slight, supercilious bow. He was her son’s employer, Mr. Chesman. The other man she had never seen before, but she guessed quickly enough the nature of his employment, and she contrived to place herself as much as she could between her boy and the detective’s searching glances. Outwardly, she appeared to pay very little attention to him, as she stepped forward and demanded in a tone of injured dignity, addressed to the butterman—

“Well, sir!”

Such a tone of firmness and righteous anger did Mrs. Turner contrive to infuse into those two simple words that for a few moments there was no answer.

Even the detective began to feel irritable, under the impression that he had been brought on what he believed to be a fool’s errand. But suddenly the tradesman’s eyes fell on trembling Johnny, and both breath and suspicion came back to him with a rush.

“Ah!” he exclaimed,“you’ve been prepared, I see. That vouhg rascal has, after all, managed to get here before me. I sent you on an errand, sir; how dared you leave it to come here ?”

“Dared, indeed!” retorted the mother, scornfully, taking the answer on herself.“There was no daring in the matter, as you can see plainly enough if you’ve got any eyes, without asking.”

As Susan Turner could not instil into her son her own bold spirit, she dexterously changed her plans, and turned his fears to his advantage in the present emergency.

“You’ve frightened a poor, helpless, defenceless, fatherless boy out of his seven senses by calling him a thief, and then you talk about ‘daring’, when in his terror he forgets errands and everything else, and flies home to his mother. Daring, indeed! It’s them is daring, it seems to me, as tries to ruin the widow and orphan, whom God says as He takes upon Himself to see to, and to punish them as does it.”

And speechless with seemingly just anger, Susan stepped back and put her arm around her son, and stood there the very personification of a pattern hen guarding her young from a wild cat.

There was another momentary pause.

Mr. Chesman was anything but of the nature of a wild cat. He was just and generous in his dealings with his customers and his servants, and as lenient towards those in his employment as it was at all well for them that he should be. Still, theft was one of those faults that it was not right, on any account, .to leave undetected and unpunished, and, moreover, the police officer was beginning to show visible signs of his dawning impatience.

Mr. Chesman must say or do something to justify having brought him there. He advanced another step further into the room, and replied, gravely enough—

“ That is true, Mrs. Turner. Our Heavenly Father does denounce very heavy punishments against those who injure or trouble the fatherless. And, as you say, he must be next to a madman in foolhardiness who would dare to do it. But if your boy has made his first step on the miserable downward road of crime, then, for his own sake, and the more that he is fatherless, am I bound to do my utmost to pull him up sharp at the outset. I tried hard to avoid this present extreme measure. I tried, both for your sake and his own, to get him to confess his wrongdoing ”-

“Confess!” burst forth Mrs. Turner again;“confess, indeed. Pray, sir, what did you mean him to confess? From what he tells me, he seems to have confessed all he had to confess on this matter—that he was utterly innocent, innocent as a baby, of having touched the money you choose to accuse him of having stolen. Leastways,” she added, as John made a pluck at her gown,“ leastways, I don’t mean, of course, not touched, because the lady had paid him the money for that badly made-out bill—but not touched for himself.”

“Ah! that is just the point—that is just the thing that, in spite of the loss to myself under any circumstances, I shall be most thankful if you can prove.

But at present, appearances are against John in every way. My clerk declares positively that she made out the bill correctly, and during the whole four years she has been in my employment she has certainly never made a mistake in my business before.”

Susan laughed contemptuously.“Then, since every one makes mistakes sometimes, I am sure that gentleman there will allow there’s reason the more to believe as she’s made one now.”

Mr. Chesman looked dubious.“Besides,” he continued,“she declares that the 3 is not like her 3’s, and it is certainly not like any of those we have compared it with in her books. Then, again, if three pounds were paid to your son, a pound more should be to my credit than can be found. And, finally, it is said that your boy has been spending money lately in a lavish way that cannot be accounted for, out of the two shillings a week that you yourself told me he was wise, and right-minded enough, to be content to keep for his own spending out of the weekly wages I pay him.”

At this last piece of evidence, against her child, Mrs. Turner opened her eyes more widely, and gave a well-acted start of troubled surprise, accompanied by a visible glance of reproachful questioning directed to her son himself.

“Oh, sir!” she said, in a voice that had every accent of the sincerest vexation—“Oh, sir, now I am indeed sorry. Now you have really told me something to grieve me. Been spending money, has he—and lavishly? Oh! I am terribly sorry to hear that, for I have known nothing of it, and I always did hope and think that he was open with me as the day. And to think, too, that he should have been buying, and hiding from his mother, who has been slaving and going without—well, going without almost necessaries, so to say, to make much of him!”

As Mrs. Turner proceeded in her tirade of lamentations the detective began to look more and more impatient, and Mr. Chesman more and more uncomfortable. She waited an instant ^s though for some one else to speak, but as no one said a word except Johnny, who muttered—

“But you needn’t to think it, mother, for I haven’t done it,”

She continued,“There, there, Johnny, hold your tongue, do! ‘It ill beseems you to be talking, and to be contradicting your kind master too, who isn’t to be thought likely as to being capable of saying what isn’t true. And good it is of him, I am sure, and Pm grateful to him for the same, to let your mother know as you’ve been going on unbeknownst to her.”

By this time Susan Turner had so talked and so acted that she had really bewildered worthy Mr, Chesman into doubts as to whatever he had said.

He began to wonder when and how he could have accused the lad of indulging in extravagances kept secret from his mother. He had certainly never intended to bring such an accusation, and felt, that if he had, it was absolutely incumbent upon him to retract it before he went any further in prosecuting his real charge. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed his forehead, and rumpled up his hair. The whole matter seemed to have got into a great muddle.

“Mrs. Turner,” he began, in anything but the voice of a justly-angered master, accusing one of his servants of having acted towards him dishonestly, Mrs. Turner, there is some mistake here. I have no cause whatever for believing that your son has treated you with undutiful reserve, as regards his purchases. The only deception that he may have practised has probably been in asserting that he can get the things he buys at some impossibly cheap rates, or that by presents or overtime he has been earning more money than is the case. As for his purchases themselves, we certainly do not mean to blame him for hiding them from you; we could not do so, for one of the evidences against him, of his dishonesty, is the free-handed way in which he is known to have stood treat for you and himself at the Crystal Palace on the 2nd August, and”-

“Goodness gracious, bless the folks!” interrupted Susan, suddenly, as if at last her patience was fairly exhausted.“Gracious me, Mr. Chesman, sir, it’s plain to see as you ain’t the father of an only child.” Which was true enough, as he had seven. Mrs. Turner went on—“But if you don’t know what it means, and can’t be expected to feel it, your good lady would understand well enough how the mother of one fatherless boy took a pride in seeing him grown to a fine, manly-looking lad, and pleased herself—and I’d like to know who’d show her where’s the harm?—in giving him the money to act paymaster. Poor boy, folks must be bitter and spiteful, to want to punish him for his mother letting him play the grand a bit, by putting upon him that he’s a thief. They’ll want to have him up next, because I’ve chose just once in a way, for mother’s pride, to dress him up a bit fine, give him a cane for a birthday present, and a coat and pair of boots out of the usual; and not come to near the five shillings a week neither, as he’s given me so regular, never knowing as I saved ‘em all up for him back again, as I’ve the bills to show. And if he’s been spending anything else, beyond now and again a pint of gooseberries, or a pen’orth o’ cherries for his mother’s tea, I’d like to know it.”

CHAPTER IX
JOHN TURNERS WISH.

“She’s a very clever woman, sir, a very clever woman.”

And there was a note of genuine admiration in the man’s voice as he spoke.

The detective and Mr. Chesman were walking away together from their vain visit to Mrs. Turner.

She had shown them all they had gone to see— more indeed, for she had apparently taken all a bright, comfortable young mother’s pride in showing what a first-rate stock of good clothes her only boy had got.

And if some of the articles of his well-kept wardrobe were unsuitable to a young errand-boy—were infinitely above his position—still, as Mrs. Turner had herself said, who could feel very sternly towards the young mother of an only son? Certainly not tender-hearted Mr. Chesman. And so he had taken himself and the detective off, actually feeling rather sheepish at having ventured, even in the face of such strong evidence, to think it possible that’ the son of such an industrious, affectionate mother could be other than an estimable boy.

“I am very sorry to have taken up your time,” he said to the detective, humbly; and, for answer, the officer looked at him with a sagacious nod, and. said, with a degree of enthusiasm :

“She’s a very clever woman, sir—a very clever woman, that yon. She ought to be in our force. She’d make her mark in no time. But you see, sir, she forgot she wasn’t only acting for your benefit. She forgot me.”

“How so? I don’t understand,” said Mr. Ches-man, uneasily. He did not feel much in the mood for riddles.“I am sure she showed you those absurdly-fine toggeries of that lad of hers with as much fuss as she did me.”

“Aye, aye, sir; of course. All a part of the acting. But she forgot my calling—forgot my having a special business, you see, to look for motives in folks making a fuss, and in folks keeping an arm round their boy all the time they talked, or getting his hand in theirs, so as to keep up the power of secret signalling all the while. She forgot all that, and so she rather overdid her part for me. A little less completeness in the whole thing—a little less coolness on her part, together, I must confess, with a little more on his—and I should have been gulled as completely as you have been.”

“Gulled?” repeated the tradesman, with fresh annoyance and some asperity.“Gulled? Do you mean that Mrs. Turner has been playing with us— has been taking us in?”

“I mean,” replied the detective, calmly,“that she has been playing with us both to her heart’s content, and that she has been gulling you—not me, oh dear $o. I’m too old a bird to be caught with that sort of chaff. When I first started to go with you to the lad’s home, I had an idea that you were very likely being over-hasty to judge. When I had got to the door of the room yonder, and my rap was answered by that bold, prompt ‘Come in/ I felt almost sure that you had made a mistake, and now”-

“And now?” repeated Mr. Chesman, inquiringly.

“And now, going on all the signs I have already told you of, I am perfectly convinced that the lad is guilty, and that the mother no more knew the exact way in which he got the money to pay for these clothes, before to-day, than you did yourself. That she has saved up every five shillings he has paid her week by week is very likely, but if I had used the search-warrant there, my way, instead of the way you chose to let her institute, we should have either found all of them in a teapot or old stocking somewhere about, or a savings-bank book accounting for their guardianship.”

His companion sighed heavily.“Then, after all, you mean that you are convinced young Turner is a thief! What in the world am I to do, then? I have told him, as you heard, to come back to his work, and be careful for the future, and not to fear hearing any more of this affair. But—if he is guilty!”

“There is no ‘if’ in the case,” said the detective, decisively.“As sure as eggs are eggs he’s stolen that money, sir, and bought those things with it, and spent the rest on the Palace treat. But all the same, sir, keep to the promise you’ve just been good enough to give him. Let him have another chance.”

The man spoke gravely and earnestly. There was quite a different ring in his voice now to that which could have been detected before. That had belonged to the keen, shrewd, business-like officer; this came from the heart of a man who had himself, once upon a time, had a hard struggle to rise above the temptation to rush along the broad path that leads to destruction.

He would have liked, as a matter of business, to let Mrs. Turner know that he saw through her wiles; but he was very far from wishing to hunt the boy to disgrace.

“Yes, sir,” he said again, still more gravely,“I’d give the lad another chance if I were you. Maybe the day’ll come when you mayn’t be sorry to remember you were a trifle merciful. And if it wasn’t for his mother the young chap would be right enough, I expect. He’s a look of his father about him, and Alexander Turner was as honest as the day. I knew him well, poor fellow, from the time we learnt our ABC together, till the day he was killed, and in all that time I never knew but of one foolish thing he did.”

“And that was?” said Mr. Chesman, inquiringly.

The answer came readily enough.

“And that was when he married Sue Bridges for the sake of her pretty face. He was a God-fearing man himself, but he forgot to find out if his sweetheart was, and his son is like to suffer in consequence. I’d give him another trial, but I’d keep a sharp look-out upon him, and not let him have the fingering of any money if I could help it.”

“No, to be sure not,” said the tradesman, in tones of anxiety.

He was awake enough to that suggestion, and fell to pondering on the almost innumerable ways in which the people he employed could rob him, if they were so evilly-minded, without any need to actually touch his money.

Meantime, while the two men walked and talked and thought, Mrs. Turner and her child sat in their home, and also talked and thought.

Not, however, until the last sound of the two pairs of retreating footsteps had ascended from the street below up to the open window of Susan Turner’s sitting-room, did either of its inmates open their lips. Then Mrs. Turner uttered a short, triumphant laugh.

“There! my laddie, who’s to say as you haven’t got a clever mother, and a good mother too, my laddie—what do you say?”

John had been gazing out of the window the past two minutes; he turned round slowly now, and answered—

“Clever, mother? Aye, you are clever enough, very clever. And good, did you say? Yes, as good as I set out learning to be, from the day you whipped me for telling the truth about that apple I stole from the greengrocer’s, when I was a little ’un.”

The laughter died off the mother’s lips, and as she stood gazing at her son she shivered a third time. There was a concentrated bitterness in his deliberate sentences, proper rather to a man twice his age than to a rosy, soft-cheeked boy.

Sin ages people terribly. She stared at him in dumb wonder, and one swift thought flashed through her numbed conscience, her hardened heart—whether her child might not have been happier, looked more beautiful and brave, and even got on better, if his father had lived to bring him up after his own pattern, instead of after hers.

But the doubt was momentary, and served no other purpose than to rouse her passion anew. Almost before John had time to go back to the window again, she flamed out—

“There, lad, have done flouting your mother, I advise you! Susan Turner ain’t one to stand that sort o’thing, I can tell you—least of all from her own son. Patience me! Whipped you, indeed ! It wouldn’t take much of your nonsense, I can tell you, to make me whip you again this very minute, for all as big as you are, and bigger as you think yourself. But there, you’re not worth wasting breath upon, for a white-faced coward. You’re not worthy to be the son of a woman of spirit. I’d better have trained you up as a straitlaced nincompoop, like your father.”

As the widow pronounced that last sentence, John started, and flushed, and suddenly dropped his face into his hand.

“Would God,” came the moan from between his hidden lips—“would God that I had been in my father’s arms when that train smashed up.”

And then he took up his cap, and went away.

CHAPTER X
SOUNDING LOVERS’ PRAISES.

“Oh! mother—”

“Yes, my son. Have you seen another grand Panjandrum, as has Johnny Turner got a second walking-stick?”

“More like an order to walk into a pair of hand—”

Edith interrupted him hastily.

“Oh, Willy, you must not be in such a terrible hurry to judge,” she exclaimed, as she entered the room.

The brother and sister had just returned from their visit to Little Crescent-street.

While Edith chatted to old Mrs. Barker, Willy had taken what he called a “circular tour” for half an hour, and then called for his sister, that he might have the walk home in her company.

Arrived at Gloucester-terrace, the forgotten incident of the policeman was recalled to his mind by the passing of one at the moment, and, darting past Edith, he flew up-stairs to tell Mrs. Reece what he had seen, and the conclusions he drew from the sight.

“But you know, mamma,” said Edith, earnestly,“the house in which Mrs. Barker and the Turners live has three other sets of lodgers besides them. There is no need to think that the policeman had anything to do with that poor boy at all.”

“Poor boy, indeed!” echoed Willy.“Even mamma doesn’t go the length of calling him that!” “Indeed, but I do then,” said Mrs. Reece, sadly.“And just because of the dismal failing for which you judge him so strongly. My dear boy, remember you don’t know how you yourself might have acted under the same temptations.”

Willy’s cheeks flushed hotly.

“No temptations would ever have made me such a mean, sneaking thing as a thief,” came the indignant mutter. In a louder key he added—“Besides, mother, you must grant that Edith is quite out in saying that I have no grounds to go upon for my judgment. First of all, we know John Turner has been a thief, and we do not know that any of the other people in the house are. And, secondly, we know that John is errand-boy at Mr. Chesman’s.”

“And, thirdly,” said Mrs. Reece, gently,“we know that it has been said by our Lord and Master, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’”

But although Mrs. Reece thus anxiously reproved her boy’s over-readiness to think evil of his neighbour, she could not help a strong conviction in her own mind that there was a terrible probability in his arguments.

“Edith, my dear,” she said, after a few minutes’ silence—“Edith, my dear, does Frank visit the Turners ever, when he goes to see Mrs. Barker?”

Edith’s first answer was a low sigh.

“Not now, mamma. Nearly a year ago he made the attempt to be friends with them—called two or three times, and then invited Johnnv to join his Bible-class. He even asked that he should call on him at his lodgings, after I told him how long we had known Susan. But it was all no good. The last time he went Susan was downright rude to him— said she had always thought it was an Englishwoman’s privilege to choose her own visitors, and she preferred those with round faces to long ones. And-”

“Then she may well like John’s,” burst in Willy;“for she feeds him up so, he’s got one like a full moon.”

“Turn to the looking-glass, and you will see its fellow,” said Mrs. Reece, with a laughing shake of the head.“What else were you going to say, Edith?”

Edith thought a moment. The interlude had put it out of her mind.“Oh, I remember now. It was about Johnny and the Bible-class. Susan said that as for her boy being expected to work all day, and sit mumchance all the evening, she would take good care no one had the power to make such a fool of him. He should enjoy his life while he was young, and grow sour when he was old, if he chose.”

“Foolish woman!” ejaculated Mrs. Reece, betrayed into momentary impatience.“As if our Saviour’s happy, restful teaching ever made anyone sour! And she might know better, too, than to talk such nonsense. Look at your favourite, Charlie Bennett; I am sure there is no brighter, merrier-tempered boy to be met with anywhere. And as for Frank himself, he is always occupied in his Master’s work, and yet I am sure there is no one who goes about looking more as if there were a perpetual song in his heart.”

“Oh! mamma, thank you!” came a low-breathed, eager little cry. And the next instant Edith, her fair face suffused with brilliant colour, was kneeling by her mother’s side, her arm around her, and pouring out murmured loving thanks for the welcome praises bestowed upon her lover.

Will stared at the spectacle for a moment, uttered a short, quite unheeded grunt, and marched out of the room with growling soliloquy—

“Just all of a piece with her goings-on with Frank.”

Will had long ago made up his mind that when it came to his turn to think about getting married, he would look out for a girl who was above“spooning,” and everything and anything else appertaining in any way to“that awful sort of rubbish.”

Will being at this time fifteen years of age, and the possible superior kind of girl, whom he meant one day to honour with his affection, possibly about eight, there was just a chance, maybe, that his sentiments might undergo some change.

About an hour later Willy Reece returned to the drawing-room. His mother and sister had dressed for dinner meanwhile, and were now quietly seated together on a sofa, drawn up beside one of the wide open windows.

Both the ladies had some dainty needlework in their hands; but Edith was much more intent, for the instant, on pointing out the beauties of a little dwarf vine standing amongst a group of other plants and flowers on the balcony.

“Charlie has really been most successful with his amateur gardening this year, mamma. His mother says that what with sales and prizes, he has made more than thirty shillings. That is a nice addition to his regular weekly wages. And this, that he has given me, is worth at least half-a-crown.”

Mrs. Reece looked critically at the well-trained, flourishing little plant.“Yes, dear, it certainly is He is a good-hearted, grateful little fellow. And he has such a good, wise mother too. How I wish poor Susan were more like her. I shall go and see the Turners to-morrow. If they are in trouble, I may be able to help them.”

CHAPTER XI
A PAUSE ON THE BRINK.

While Mrs. Reece and her children anxiously wondered about the appearance of a policeman on the door-step of that house in Little Crescent-street, John Turner was escaping from his mother’s watching eyes by snatching up the cap he had thrown from him an hour since, and leaving home as hastily as he had flown to it.

He would have been thankful enough if he could have escaped from his own thoughts as easily.

Mrs. Turner pondered over many things while her son was absent. She had time, for he did not return until ten o’clock at night, and then he entered the room with a countenance so wretched and haggardlooking that her mother-love rose superior to all sentiments of irritation.

She asked no questions, but set to work busily to light a fire to make tea for him, and to set out food.

But John quickly stopped these preparations.

“Mother, mother, for goodness sake, go to bed and leave me in peace.”

The imploring words were uttered with such earnestness she was fain to comply.

The only refreshment that could have done him any good just then was the refreshment of a quiet conscience, and that she could not give him; and, thanks to her, her son could not seek it for himself.

With all her boldness and outward bravery, Susan Turner’s own sleep that night was not easily gained, and was much troubled when at last it filled her mind with uneasy dreams instead of their forerunning anxious thoughts. One idea, however, she did seize hold of in the midst of her waking and slumbering thoughts, as a salve to her son’s present state of mental conflict, and she lost no time on the following morning in administering it.

“Johnny, lad,’’ she began, gently, when she came out of her room to light the fire for the breakfast kettle.

John was still looking moody, but he answered the tender tones gently enough.

“Yes, mother. What is it?”

“Why, you know, Johnny dear, as the old saying has it, it’s no good crying over spilt milk, and what’s done can’t be helped. You can’t undo the past now, and so it’s not a bit o’ use you worrying—not if you worried to a threadpaper about it. But of course, as it’s fallen out awkward like this, and made trouble, you can just be as careful as you like for the future, as straight as a rat running to its hole, and I’ll not say you nay.”

John raised his eyes, with the first gleam of brightness they had had in them since yesterday.

“Yes, mother, and—and,” in tones of hurried, hungry hope—“and—mother—will you help me?”

Mrs. Turner turned rather sharply back to the fireplace. But at that piteous appeal, even in that hour, she could not wholly keep down the expression of contempt for“ poor-spiritedness.”

“Help you, laddie! Nonsense! What do you want with help?—help for what? I always told you to be careful. You can’t lay it to me that I told you to go changing bills, and dipping your fingers into other folks’ tills.”

John dropped his head again. Laid it down on the window-sill. He knew of no comforter but his mother, and she proved but a sorry one for his present bitter load of suffering.

Still, Susan did love her boy, and though she despised him for his nobler qualities, she did pity his present distress.

Leaving the fire to its own devices, she rose from her knees, washed her hands, and went up to him, drawing his head from its hard pillow to rest against her bosom.

“Johnnie, boy, don’t look so woebegone. I won’t have it. Don’t I tell you as you shall please yourself in the future? It will only be the prudent thing to do now, too, for a while to come, to be careful. In fact, if I were in your shoes, I declare I wouldn’t so much as look at that stingy old fellow’s cheeseparings or a rotten eggshell.”

John lifted his head from its leaning-place with a stifled sigh. In his present mood blame of himself for the past from his mother’s loving lips, and tender, earnest admonitions for his conduct in the years to come, would have soothed him infinitely more than this unjust blame of another.

“Mr. Chesman is not stingy, mother.”

Mrs. Turner withdrew her arms, and went back to the fireplace.

“Ah, well, I don’t care what he is, lad. He’s a prosing old fool, any way, and I can’t stand to picking, words to suit him, with you looking as if you’d been starved for a month. Just hand me out a couple more sticks from the cupboard; this kettle seems bound to boil by about the middle of next week.”

His mother had had more than enough of a disagreeable subject, and John Turner knew her too .well to recur to it any more for that morning, at any rate, in words. But, in spite of his yesterday’s fast, he had made but a sorry meal when he started off, at ten minutes to eight o’clock, for the dreaded scene of his usual day’s work.

Mrs. Turner sprang forward, and stopped him a moment at the room-door. She laid her hand down firmly on his shoulder.

“Johnny! whatever else you do, stiffen your back and hold up your head, and put a bold face on this matter. Do you hear me?”

“Aye, mother, I hear you.”

“Then just see that you heed me.”

A couple of hours later, Susan Turner put her own precepts into practice; but it would have been better for her if she had felt, and shown, shame for these miserable fruits of her teaching.

John had got over the first torture of meeting his companions’ eyes and whisperings after yesterday’s exposure, and he had started on his morning’s rounds to the customers, when Mrs. Reece tapped at her former servant’s sitting-room door.

“Come in. Who’s there?” called Susan, unceremoniously.

But she changed her tone when she saw her visitor, and civilly set a chair for her, expecting an order for some extra work.

“I hope the young ladies and gentlemen are all quite well, ma’am, seeing as you’ve troubled to come round yourself.”

“Yes, thank you, Susan. Oh, yes. I have not come myself because I had none of them to send.” Mrs. Reece’s tones were less tranquil than usual. She continued, after a moment’s pause,“The truth is, Susan, two of them were here yesterday—Miss Edith and Master Willy.”

“To see me, ma’am? Did they come when I was out a few minutes in the morning?” asked Susan in some surprise.“I went out so very early and got back again so soon.”

“No,” answered the lady, somewhat hesitatingly. She wished to help, but she so feared to hurt.“They did not come up here, Susan. Miss Edith came to see poor old Mrs. Barker. But they saw other visitors here.”

Mrs. Reece came to an abrupt pause, and when Susan broke it at last it was to say in a hard voice:“There are a many lodgers in this house; it’s to be supposed as they have visitors now and again as well as other folks.

“Yes,” assented Mrs. Reece, gently, but very gravely.“That is true enough, Susan. Only, unhappily, one of the visitors my children saw here yesterday, was one seldom welcomed anywhere. And Mr. King tells me he came to you.”

Susan’s cheeks flamed and her eyes flashed.“Then Mr. King’s like a many of the rest of the clergy, likes to clack about what doesn’t concern him.”

The colour came into the caller’s cheeks also at this rude speech. But she kept her temper. “You are in Mr. King’s district, Susan. It is his duty to care for you especially. Mrs. Chesman told him yesterday evening that you were in trouble, and as lie knew I am much interested in you, he thought you might better like to see me than himself. He has promised me that he will come round this evening to see poor Johnny.”

Susan drew up her head, and curled her lip.“Then, ma’am, I beg your pardon; but I may as well say out at once that he’d better ha’ kept his promise to himself. He never yet has had a chance to go worrying of the boy, for all he’s tried hard enough, and he never shall. He’s never so much as set eyes on him to my knowledge, and I don’t care if he never does. I feel quite equal to teaching my own child all as I care as he should know, and I don’t want no backbiting believers in lies coming about either of us.”

The day was yet to come when Susan Turner was thankful enough to have Mr. King visit her son in jail.

CHAPTER XII
A FRESH START.

A few minutes past eight o’clock, but almost daylight still, that bright August evening.

Mrs. Turner had set out the supper-tea in readiness for John’s return home for the night. The room looked cheerful, and the meal comfortable. She had taken extra pains the past few days to make things pleasant for her young son.

The great check and pain of his discovered thefts had shaken Johnny’s confidence in his mother’s practice and example. Her influence over him was weakened for a time, and she was determined to regain it.

There were crisp, fresh-washed lettuces, a nice little bit of cold neck of mutton, a crusty new loaf, butter, and a fruit turnover for her boy especially. The kettle was boiling, the teapot warmed, and Mrs. Turner promised herself a reward for her preparations in the shape of returning smiles on her child’s face. Even his good looks seemed to be fading under the perpetual cloud lately brooding over them. She set out the tea-caddy.

“Ah, yes, that’s it,” she murmured;“I’ll get him to arrange for us to go somewhere on the river on Sunday. He’s always liked the water from a little one. That’ll cheer him up a bit, if anything will’’

And then the door was burst open, and Johnny flung himself into the room with the passionate exclamation:—“It’s no good, mother!”

“What’s no good, Johnny?”

Very evidently no good just then to suggest excursions by land or water, or pleasures of any other kind either. But to what else was he referring?

He took another step into the room, slammed-to the door, dashed down his cap on the floor, and repeated still more passionately:

“It’s no good! Stay at Mr. .Chesman’s I can’t and won’t!”

“Oh—h—h!” ejaculated his mother, slowly;“that’s it, is it?” And she set the teapot she had just filled on the hob, and came forward.“What’s the matter this time, Johnny? What has happened to put things out now?”

“Everything!” he exclaimed, as he threw himself down into a chair;“and it’s no good, mother, your asking me, or ordering me to stay there, for I’ll run away if you do.”

“All right, laddie, and when your mother takes to being hard upon you, so you may. But you haven’t yet told me what’s put you out so terribly to-night.”

“To-night!” retorted John, angrily.“It’s no more to do with to-night than with every minute in every hour of the ten days since—since that affair. I’m watched about, and whispered about, from the first minute I get to the shop in the morning, to the last minute I leave in the evening. And I’m trusted no more than if I was a”-

And then he stopped abruptly in his torrent of wild words.

The common everyday expression, that was so often on the lips of people about him at one time or another, had been on his. But whatever right those others had to indignation, he had none. He deserved the watchings, he deserved the whisperings, he deserved the stifling atmosphere of mistrust by which he was surrounded, and he knew it. He had earned the wretchedness of being trusted no more than if he were a thief, because he was a thief.

But none the less were the watchings, and the whisperings, and the distrust very terrible to him— a nightmare which he could not shake off, from which he could not awake.

John Turner considered this state of things the harder, in that it was visited upon him at the season when he felt more inclined for honesty, and was more honest, than he had been since his early childhood. But as this honesty, and inclination for honesty, were founded upon nothing more substantial than the memory of the discomfort he had procured for himself by stealing, his new virtues were not strong enough to put up with humiliation, or to bear the very things which might have served as useful reminders of the past.

Under the supervision at Mr. Chesman’s he might have been constrained into at least the continuance of an outward honesty; he might have lived his life respectably in the eyes of his fellow-men. But his mother had brought him up without prayer, without Christ, without God, and he had no strength to keep to even outward uprightness, no strength to bear constraint.

“Stay there any longer!” he repeated for the third time,“I can’t and won’t.”

And he drew up his chair to the table with a heavy frown on his face. It might as well have been spread with sticks and stones as with appetising mutton and crisp lettuces, as far as he was concerned. But his mother was feeling too indignant now, on his behalf, to feel this disappointment with regard to her supper-table.

“How dare they say anything to you?” she exclaimed with angry sympathy.“They couldn’t do more, the sneaks, if so be as they’d been able to prove anything. As it is, I’m in two minds whether I would have them up for their words.”

John shook his head impatiently.

“Nonsense, mother—you couldn’t. They’re careful enough to say nothing out loud. Mr. Chesman gave orders I wasn’t to be annoyed. But he, and all them about the place, look at me as if they’d never got it out of their thoughts. When the clerk gave me a bill I had to take out with me to-day, she asked me to read it aloud to her, to be sure there could be no mistakes. And you should just have heard the way she said the word mistake.’”

“Young hussey!” ejaculated Mrs. Turner.“I only wish that I’d had the shaking of her.”

So did John at that minute. But the girl had often done him a little kind turn since he first obtained that situation, and she was a good, earnest, harding-working girl, doing her best to help in the support of a paralysed father.

John had not scrupled to try to cast blame upon her to shield himself from fitly deserved punishment. And neither was he sorry now to hear his mother grumble at her.

Seeing her boy’s face begin to grow smoother beneath the influences of her cruel sympathy, Mrs. Turner once more directed her attention to the meal. She fetched the teapot from the hob, passed her hand affectionately over her boy’s head, put the meat and plates before him, and sat down before the tea-tray.

“Now, Johnny, lad,” she said briskly,“clear the clouds out of your sky—there’s a good boy, and let us enjoy our supper. Then well have a good talk over matters afterwards, while I turn that necktie of yours for you. The sun has faded it nigh upon to a white, I declare.”

John pushed in his chin to get a glimpse of the blue tie himself.“But, mother, it won’t be any good for you arguing for my staying at Ches-man’s.”

“Never fear,” was the positive-toned answer.“You don’t suppose that I’m going to want my son to stay where he gets put upon, and insulted. No, laddie, thank you! That sort of thing won’t suit Susan Turner. If you wanted to stop I shouldn’t let you. To-morrow’s Saturday, and to-morrow I go round with you and give notice that you leave.that day week. And so now, cut that mutton, and let me see that you’ve too much sense to quarrel with your victuals because other things ain’t straight.”

CHAPTER XIII
MR. KING KNOWS ALL ABOUT IT.

If ever there was a woman in the world who had less excuse than another for being other than strictly honest, perhaps it was Susan Turner. Notable, neat, clever, healthy, and industrious, so long as there was work to be had in the world, she was certain to get a portion of it, and so long as there was pay to be earned, she was sure to be able to earn a very fair share. Unhappily, she wanted more than a fair share. Whatever she had, she always wanted“a little more.”

When Susan’ Turner was little Susan Bridges she began with breaking the Tenth Commandment, and, walking on along the“broad road,” she got to breaking the Eighth.

So nice in dress and look and bearing were the mother and son, as they walked along together to Mr. Chesman’s, in the early morning, that many a weary-hearted fellow-creature looked after them half-enviously.

There was such a pleasant, cheering, wholesome look of respectability about the pair. The loathsome plague-spot of sin had not as yet shown its taint outwardly.

“Ah!” muttered a pair of pale, trembling lips,“if only one could get back into the right path, it would be worth a great struggle to keep there, if only to look like them and feel so free.”

Little the poor creature guessed that the objects of her admiring envy were wilfully fastening Satan’s black chain about their necks.

Saturday morning, and the cart-loads of fresh vegetables passing along the streets. Children seated on doorsteps before great baskets of flowers, tying up roses and geraniums and pansies into“buttonholes” and bouquets.

A little girl, staggering along under a great load, let fall a little bunch of forget-me-nots. John stooped, picked it up, and raised his hand to throw it back into the basket. The child had passed on, unknowing of her loss. Mrs. Turner pulled John’s arm back.

“Here, Johnnie, give me those. I’m fond of forget-me-nots.”

“But, mother, that poor child!”

“0, bother the child. They won’t make any difference to her. She won’t let herself suffer for their loss, you may be bound—make up her bunches a bit smaller—that’s all.”

And she took the flowers and dropped them into her basket. Jack fumbled in his pocket, found a penny, and ran back to the flower-seller whom they had passed by now. Another boy had stopped her to tell her something, but Jack paid no heed to him, as he dropped his penny into the pocket of the child’s pinafore.

“For two or three bits of flowers you dropped just now,” he said shortly.

The girl’s little pale face brightened with a glad smile, and John felt strengthened by it to bear his mother’s sneer.“She did look such a dreadfully poor, starved little thing, mother.”

He felt it needful to apologise for his honesty.

“I’m glad he paid you,” said Charlie Bennett, warmly.“Perhaps he isn’t really so awfully mean as I was afraid, after alL”

Charlie had been a witness of the whole incident, and had instantly recognised the boy who had picked up his knife in the Crystal Palace, and the woman who had tried to help her son to keep it.

“But this was nearly being worse even than that,” said Charlie, with a grave shake of his young head. And then he bestowed a halfpenny upon the small flower-merchant, also for the sake of her“dreadfully poor, starved-looking appearance,” and ran off to the sphere of his own day’s wofk. He was two years younger than John Turner, and his situation and pay were proportionably inferior. But he was honest as the day, and very much liked by his employers and the customers.

“And never you fear, my lad,” said his rough and ready master, that very day—“never you fear that I’ll stand in your light. If I see the chance I’ll get you a place where they can afford to give better pay, although I shall be sorry to lose you.”

But some hours had passed before Mr. Bent said this, and our present business is with Susan Turner. The distance between her home and the butterman’s was not above ten minutes’ quiet walk, and the clock was just striking eight on Trinity church, when the pair reached Mr. Chesman’s door. The apprentice lad had just opened it, and John set to work as usual, to help him in taking down the shutters, while his mother stepped inside to speak to her boy’s master.

“I suppose he’s up?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” was the ready answer.“He’s generally the first to be about in the house, but Saturdays in especial, he’s always early. You wait in the shop a minute and he’s sure to see you and come. He’s done breakfast twenty minutes ago.”

The boy was quite right. Mr. Chesman saw Susan almost as soon as she entered his shop, and had very soon learnt her errand. He looked greatly grieved and hurt, as well he might, after the charitable leniency he had shown to his young errand-boy—the generosity he had shown to him by consenting to keep him on.

“You see, Mrs. Turner,” he said at last in sad perplexity, when he found that she was really resolute about the boy’s removal;“you see—you must see yourself—that it is absolutely necessary for John’s own welfare that he should stay with me, at any rate for another three months after this late affair. Whether he was accused rightly or wrongly the imputation would go terribly against him just now, in getting another situation.”

“I don’t see why,” said Susan hastily.

Her companion raised his eyebrows.

“Why, of course I should be bound to tell the circumstances of that overpaid bill and—other things.”

“I don’t see why,” was the quick, sharp answer given,“as we have proved that my boy had nothing in the world to do with all that, and is as honest as the day. I don’t see what call, what right indeed, sir, begging your pardon,” and Susan tossed her head —“what right you have to attach other people’s mistakes or wrong-doings to my boy’s name.”

Mr. Chesman looked up and fixed his eyes with a grave, searching gaze upon the woman’s face. Her audacity astounded him, and pained him as well. He also, like the detective, Mrs. Reece, and good old Mrs. Barker, saw little hope of reformation for the poor son of such a mother.

Susan Turner’s eyes fell somewhat before the look now resting on her, and the more when the worthy butterman said quietly, but significantly—

“If we had proved that circumstance about John that you name, Mrs. Turner, I grant you that it would be highly reprehensible in me, as well as cruel, to mention that recent affair in connection of any sort with his name, lest it should do him an unwarrantable injury. But—”

And the tradesman spoke in a very low tone, as though afraid of other ears catching what he said: but there was still greater meaning in his voice—“But, Mrs. Turner, matters are, unhappily, far other than as you state them. My companion of the visit I paid you last week says that the case is proved against your son—not for him. Proved, mind, I say. He brought me proof, at any rate in one instance, the next day—not to help me to prosecute the charge against John (that I had promised not to do), but to relieve my mind from a heavy fear that lay upon it, that I had really, perhaps, judged the fatherless harshly or unjustly. Now I have proof that I did not do so.”

Mrs. Turner’s paling cheeks grew paler still at this final, emphatic declaration. “Have—have—you— said so—to anyone else?”

“Only to one other person. To our good young clergyman, Mr. King,” was the reply.

But Susan clasped her hands in a spasm of agitation.“Ah,” she gasped.“Then—then—he will tell-”

“Nobody,” quietly interrupted Mr. Chesman.“I begged him not. It would not be well even for myself to be known to have a-, to be supposed indifferent to the character of those in my employ. I told Mr. King in confidence, thinking that he might be a help to John.”

John’s mother moved her shoulders impatiently at that suggestion. The only help she cared for, just at the present, for herself or her child, was help to be free to do as they chose without suffering for their wrong-doing. Her companion looked at her for a few moments in anxious silence.

“Well, Mrs. Turner,” he said at last,“I ask you now again, do you leave your boy with me, with one who knows his temptations, and will try in every way to guard him from them, because he is an orphan—the only son of his mother, a widow—or do you still persist in your intention to take him away?”

There was a sullen pause of some moments, and then Susan muttered:“Ah, well, give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him, and that’s how it is now. You’ve all, between you, agreed upon a pack of lies, and to ruin my boy’s character, and if he’s to go about amongst his companions with the slur of a thief upon him, it’s not much he or I’d thank you for your good words or deeds. He’ll leave you this day week, and I’ll make bold to declare that he shan’t starve, though he won’t trouble you to speak for him.”

Mr. Chesman sighed. But he had done all he could, and in a few days’ time his connection with the career of John Turner ceased for some years to come.

CHAPTER XIV
REJOICETH NOT IN INIQUITY.

Since John Turner had been earning the rent and the chief part of his own daily meals, Susan Turner’s two days a week at Gloucester Crescent had come down to one day a fortnight. She made quite as much money, perhaps, as she did before, but she got it chiefly by needlework now. John’s pride and her own were rising above “charing.” Something besides pride came at last to put a stop to it altogether.

Susan had gone round to Mr. Chesman’s so early that Saturday morning, because it was the day she was due at Mrs. Reece’s, and at eight o’clock at night, which was her hour for leaving, it would have been too late to expect to get private speech with the busy tradesman at the busiest time of the week.

As it was, her few minutes’ chat lost Mrs. Turner her day’s wages.

•“Have you settled about my leaving, mother?” whispered John, stepping outside the shop-door to put this question.

And his mother looked round on him quietly enough.

“Yes, John. You are to leave this day week. And, John—Miss Edith’s—Mr. King knows all.”

John’s cheeks flushed.“And of course he’s told all them in Gloucester Terrace?”

“Of course he has, and I shan’t go there any more.”

Susan Turner knew that if she had had such a tale to tell against any one, she should have told it, and, in spite of Mr. Chesman’s assurances, she did not believe in anyone else being more charitable.

“A fine thing it would be for Mrs. Reece,” she muttered to herself,“a very fine thing, to be able to cast it up at me—. ‘Ah, you see I told you how it would be.’ But she shall not get the chance to crow, for I’ll not go anigh her any more for a while.”

With this resolve Mrs. Turner walked home again, instead of to Gloucester Terrace, and regardless of the inconvenience she might occasion to one who had been a kind friend to her for more than twenty years, she wrote a short note, simply saying that she should be unable for the present to do any more work for Mrs. Reece.

She carried her note out to the post, and then stayed out for some hours, so as not to be at home in case her employer went’ round to inquire why she did not appear.

Of course, about ten o’clock, two hours before the letter reached its destination, kind- hearted Mrs. Reece did send to Little Crescent-street for news of the absent charwoman, and she felt much relieved, although much surprised, when Willy brought back word, that at any rate she was not ill, nor her son either, as they had been seen going out together very cheerfully in the early morning, by some of the other people in the house.

“Taken another holiday already?” exclaimed Edith.

“Now, ma’am, don’t you be so over-ready at judging folks,” said Will, mischievously.“John, at any rate, hasn’t taken another holiday, for I met him going along with a basketful of eggs and bacon, looking most industrious. I did not like to ask if it was his mother, instead of himself, the policeman had-”

Had what, did not transpire, for Mrs. Reece popped her hand quickly over her son’s mouth, looking quite angry for once.

“Willy, I am ashamed of you. How often am I to warn you against this thoughtless habit of uttering random speeches to your fellow-creatures’ disadvantage? It is most cruel I think I must get Edith to paint that text for you in letters a foot long, to hang up in your room—‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ Do you hear, Edith?”

But no, Edith did not hear.

“She’s gone, mother,” said Willy, quietly, and in his heart he felt a loving gratitude to the sister who had so softly moved away, to spare her young brother the mortification of having a hearer to his sharp reproof.

Mrs. Reece sat down and put her arm around her tall young son.

“My dear boy, do you remember that St. Paul tells us that without charity we are nothing worth, and that charity rejoiceth not in iniquity?”

“Well, mother,” ejaculated Will, in a tone of indignant expostulation,“you don’t think that I rejoice in iniquity?”

A sigh was the first answer.“It looks sadly like it, my dear, when you are always so ready, even so eager, to hear tales of wrong-doing, so prone to believe them, so quick to repeat them. How I do wish that you would try to take example by Frank. Many and many a dark tale he must necessarily become acquainted with in the course of his duties; but we scarcely ever hear anything from his lips about his parishioners, but what is likely to make us feel more kindly towards them or more tenderly. If we judged most of our neighbours from your mouth, we should be able to feel nothing for them but contempt, suspicion, or dislike. And towards yourself—fear.”

Will’s bright face grew serious enough now, and penitent.

“But, mother,” he began.

“Well, dear?”

“Well—I don’t altogether understand you. You seem to mean that we are to shut our eyes to everything that is done wrong, and to treat bad people and good people all alike. Wouldn’t that make a. great muddle in the world?”

Mrs. Reece’s gravity gave way to smiles.“A very? great muddle, my dear boy. And if that is what I seem to mean, it is very different to what I do mean! The fault in you, that I long to see you strive against, is your aptitude to open your eyes extra wide to take: in the sight of wrong doing, and to treat all people; as ‘bad people’ without due cause. Don’t you know that by the law of our country all people are considered innocent until they are found out to be guilty. But you give up your birthright; you judge most folks guilty until they are proved innocent. Like that affair with your silver pencil-case, when you mislaid it the other day, you made sure somebody had stolen it! By-the-bye, my boy-”

“Yes, mother?” asked Will, rather startled, his mother looked so serious again. Mrs. Reece continued.

“It has just occurred to me, my boy, to ask if you went round the house on Wednesday, after you found your pencil, to apologise for the sin of your unjust suspicions. Did you?”

Will’s face had grown hot, and he moved uneasily in the encircling arm.

“Of course, mother,” he muttered,“you—you know—that I did not.”

“Yes, Will,” was the grieved answer,“you are right. I do know, but I see no ‘of course’ in the case. Had you found your pencil in anyone’s possession, you would have expected them to give it up, I presume, but you did your best to steal away good characters, and when the theft was discovered, you made no attempt at restitution. Is it ‘of course’ a gentleman and a Christian should behave so meanly?”

Susan Turner thought that she showed her love for her child by encouraging him to get all he could, and sympathising with him in rebellion against justly deserved punishment for wrong-doing.

Mrs. Reece proved her deep mother-love in a widely different way.

And both mothers reaped their due reward.

One worked with the Lord, the other worked against Him.

CHAPTER XV
MRS. BENNETT MAKES A LATE CALL.

“Who’s going to have my place?” asked John of the apprentice, the last day of his service at Mr. Chesman’s.

“I know no more than yourself,” was the reply.“I’ve been wondering.”

“0, well,” said John,“there’s one thing, your wonder won’t have to last long. You’ll know, and see, too, I suppose, Monday morning.”

His own curiosity was satisfied even sooner, and he looked cross, as well as tired, when he reached home a few minutes after ten o’clock on Saturday night. He had given up Mr. Chesman’s place, which was considered one of the best in the neighbourhood, of his own free will; but, all the same, he envied his successor.

“Who do you suppose, mother, is going to step into my shoes, of all people in the world? ”

Mrs. Turner guessed one or two improbable people.

“No, no,” said Johnny,“none of those, mother. No need to go so far afield in your guesses. I shouldn’t feel so wild if it was anyone you’ve mentioned.”

Mrs. Turner looked round with more interest.“Do you feel wild, Johnny?”

“Should just think I do, indeed. Especially when you will go on calling me ‘Johnny. It’s one of the Bennetts coming after me.”

“Never!” ejaculated Mrs. Turner. And she almost dropped the supper-dish of Irish stew on to the table with her exclamation.

“You never mean to tell me, John, as that sneaking Jim Bennett has gone and got into that good berth?”

“No, I don’t,” said John sharply,“for it isn’t Jim as has got it at all. But it’s nigh as bad. It’s one of the same lot A cousin of Jim’s, he says, whose own master’s been speaking up sky-high for him to Mr. Chesman.”

Mrs. Turner looked as annoyed now as her son himself.“Well I never!—think of that, now,” she grumbled.“If I’d had a guess at such a thing as that happening, I’d have persuaded you to stay on.”“You wouldn’t have had the need,” came the half-sulky mutter,“for I’d have stayed without.”

At that moment there was a tap at the door. Almost before permission to enter could be given it opened, and the visitor came in. There was no need to ask who it was. It was the opposite neighbour, Mrs. Bennett, and her face looked as self-satisfied as her companions looked downcast.

“Well,” she began, dropping into a chair without an invitation,“it is a bit late to be intruding, Mrs. Turner, to be sure; but then, as I says to my husband, and to my Jim, I didn’t feel as I could sleep without first saying a neighbourly word to you .in your trouble.”

John’s cheeks grew pale, but his mother’s crimsoned as she repeated shrilly,“Trouble! Pray, Mrs Bennett, and what trouble may you be meaning? I know of none.”

Mrs. Bennett shook her head slowly, with a pitying air.“Ah, my dear, it’s as I’ve just been saying to Mrs. Barker—good old soul—and the Browns: you are brave enough to try and face it down; but you see it will go so hardly, I’m thinking, upon Jack.”

Susan Turner got up from her chair, walked round the table, and placed herself close in front of the unwelcome intruder.

“Look here, Mrs. Bennett, you and I ain’t never been that thick in friendship as to be free of each other’s places in season and out of season, so to say; and half-past ten o’clock at night is very out of season, I make bold to think; so if you’ve got anything spiteful on your mind to say, say it, and Jack and I will be more ready to thank you for your room than your company.”

Mrs. Bennett tossed up her head, and uttered a sort of snort in return for this speech. But at the same time she also rose from her chair and moved rather quickly to the door before she said anything further. Once safely outside^ she delivered her parting shot.

“Oh, ah!” she retorted spitefully; “it’s all very well, Susan Turner, to put a bold face on the matter; but the folks at Chesman’s have let out all about John’s going-on, for all Mr. Chesman’s telling them not. A master can’t put the gag on people’s tongues, you know, and it strikes me that civil words would better become a thief’s mother than-”

Susan’s eyes literally sparkled with passion. She sprang forward.“I’ll have the law of you, you slandering woman, for saying such things,” she exclaimed, and she dashed her door to in the speaker’s face.

“I’d have had the law of you, if you’d a-thrown me down the stairs,” came the retort from without.

But to that Susan Turner vouchsafed no reply. She slowly returned to the table, and began unconsciously clearing it of the untouched supper. John watched his mother, as unheeding as herself that the hunger felt awhile since had not been satisfied. John was thinking—thinking of himself, and his life and circumstances. Only fifteen years old, the child of respectable parents, brought up comfortably, very fairly educated, with good abilities, quite unacquainted with poverty or want, and yet already openly branded, and justly, as a thief!

Whilst his mother was still occupied in putting away full dishes instead of empty ones, John crept away to his own little cupboard of a room, without the ceremony of saying“ good-night.”

For a long time he sat there in darkness, excepting for the little thin thread of light that came through the keyhole of the sitting-room. At last Mrs. Turner had finished her duties for the night, made the place tidy, put on the fire-guard, and arranged everything as methodically as though she were in her usual self-collected state of mind. Then she stepped to John’s door.

“Good-night, Johnny dear. Are you getting to bed?”

There was no answer. Mrs. Turner softly turned the handle of the door, and peeped in. It was all darkness. She could not see the boy crouching away from her eyes in the dim corner.

“Are you asleep, dear?” she whispered gently. Still no answer, and with a final murmur of“ Goodnight, laddie, darling,” she re-closed the door, and went off to her own bed.

Then John stepped out from his corner, and lighted a candle, but not“to light him to bed.” according to the old nursery rhyme. He felt no more sleepy than hungry just now, in spite of his long day’s work. Good and evil were having a great conflict in his heart at this date; at the present hour go6d had gained the upper hand.

One possession John Turner had, which he valued very highly—more highly even than his kid gloves or silver-adorned walking-cane, and to that possession he was anxious to devote half an hour to-night. He scarcely looked at it, as a rule, much as he prized it.“It was not in his line,” as he and his mother would have said, but he was very eager to have a quiet examination of it for a few minutes now.

He opened a drawer, put his hand under those shirts with the fine linen wrist-bands, which his mother had been making for him when Mr. Chesman and the policeman interrupted her, and drew forth a small volume. It was only his dead father’s little Bible. Inside the cover were some texts written by that father’s own hand. John’s eyes rested on one at once—

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.”

“Father, father,” he moaned,“if only you could come back I might be different.”

But—“if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.”

CHAPTER XVI
A PARTING PRESENT FOR MRS. BARKER.

It was nearly ten o’clock on Sunday morning before John made his appearance in the sitting-room, and even then he looked quite as tired as when he went to bed. The fire was scarcely alight, and the breakfast not yet laid. Mrs. Turner looked round towards him as he came into the room.

“Breakfast will be soon ready, laddie. But my head was that bad when I first woke, that I felt I really must be quiet a bit. And you don’t look much better.”

“My head’s splitting,” said John, shortly. And then he knelt down in front of the fire, and did his best to coax it up under the kettle, with a view to the cup of tea he knew they were both longing for.

“What would you like for us to do to-day?” asked Mrs. Turner, half an hour or so later, as she put her empty cup down with a contented sigh. She was much better already. But John still felt ill and miserable. His mouth was out of taste, as the saying is, and he had not enjoyed his tea.

.“I don’t think I should like anything,” he said,“unless it might be for you and me to sit still all day, and go to sleep.”

His mother laughed slightly.“Very well, dear. As far as you are concerned there’s no reason in life why you shouldn’t please yourself. And as far as I am concerned, I shall be glad enough to stay at home to-day, although I have no especial wish to sit still, and certainly none to go to sleep. It’s a good thing as I haven’t either, for there’s plenty to do between this and Monday week.”

John opened his eyes.“Why, mother? What’s there more to do than usual, except looking for another place for me? And you can’t get forward with that to-day.”

“Especially not by staying at home,” assented Susan with another laugh.“No, laddie, you’re right enough there, and what’s more, I wouldn’t if I could. I don’t mean as you should think about another situation till we’ve got clear away from this neighbourhood, and its interfering, back-biting tongues, altogether.”

Jack pushed his chair back from the table in astonishment.

“Away from the neighbourhood?” he repeated.“Away from this house you’ve lived in, mother, ever since you were married?”

“Bless the boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Turner, irritably.“And pray why not, child? Do you think I’m a snail, born with a house on my back, that I’m bound to stick to as long as I live! I’ve been in this same dull little street better than sixteen years; and that’s sixteen years too many to my thinking, excepting, as I suppose, there are long-faced parsons and Mrs. Bennetts, more or less, wherever one goes. Anyway, well see”

“And when, mother?”

“When do we leave here, do you mean?”

A nod of the head answered her.“Why, as you know, Johnny, with me it’s always quick the word, and quick the deed; I didn’t go to sleep last night after that impertinent creature had been here, before I’d decided as there shouldn’t be above one more Saturday night as she’d have the chance to come bouncing in upon me with her insolence. I give notice to-morrow, and to-morrow week we leave.”“Oh!” said John; and a few moments later he left the table, and carried his pale face and his heavy heart back to his own small space of solitude.

He had a fancy that he should have liked for once in his life to go to church, but he was ashamed to say so. He had to be contented with loneliness and the little purple Bible. And little he read in that but his father’s name written in his father’s own handwriting, and that text immediately below—

“Better is a good name than much riches.”

It seemed somehow, to John Turner, as though in leaving those rooms, which had hitherto been his only home, some link between him and his father would be wrenched away. And though he could recollect nothing whatever of that upright, truehearted parent, the very things spoken of him in ridicule had nourished in John a secret, deep veneration for his memory.

But the wrench had to be borne. Susan Turner was resolute in her determination to get away from a neighbourhood associated with disgrace for her only child, and through him for herself. When Monday week came a cart was driven up to the door of that house in Little Crescent Street, and Mrs. Bennett stood at her window opposite, and made free comments whilst her opposite neighbour’s goods and chattels were piled up into it, and driven away.

Mrs. Turner had taken good care to go far enough distant from her old home while she was about it. She set up her new housekeeping in the Borough, over the other side of Blackfriars Bridge, a very dingy locality in comparison with bright, clean Bays-water; but then, Cannon Road was nearly three times as wide as Little Crescent Street, and instead of having only a sort of good-sized cupboard to sleep in, John had a regular room to himself in the new lodgings, and his mother furnished it, and trimmed it up in such a way that he very soon felt more than reconciled to the change of residence.

Truth to say, before the week’s notice at the old home was out, young Turner was as anxious to leave as his mother. Mrs. Bennett had set all eyes staring, and all tongues wagging, around him. She was never very careful as to what she said about other people; but Susan’s conduct towards her, that Saturday night, had roused all the venom in her nature, and she spared neither mother nor son.

“Poor things!” said honest Alec Brown, as he heard the tales about the Turners; and he looked at his own young boys and girls around the tea-table, and said emphatically—

“Whatever you do, children, look out that you never give anyone a hold against your good name; it’s driving those Turners away from their home, now, and it’s driven many a poor creature out of life, before this.”

“Poor, poor lambie!” murmured dear old Mrs. Barker, with the tears in her eyes, when the whole account had been related to her unwilling ears.

“Poor, poor lambie! May the Lord have pity upon His poor, weak, straying little one!”

To the octogenarian old dame the tall, well-grown lad of fifteen was almost as much a little child as when he lisped out his tale to her about the stolen apple. On the Sunday night before leaving he. went down to her kitchen, with a pair of slippers in his hand he had grown out of for some time past. He had been searching for some farewell gift for several days, but had rejected one thing after another, with the secret fear lest Mrs. Barker might refuse to accept them on the plea that she could not feel sure they had been bought with honest money. On Saturday morning, whilst engaged in her final packing, his mother had come to him with these slippers in her hand.

“John, dear, I wonder whether Smith would give you a few pence for these? I thought they’d do for my own wear, but they pinch my toes.”

John made an eager grasp at them.“Oh, mother, can’t I have them to do what I like with? ”

Susan gave them up, with a momentary stare of wonder at“her boy’s excitement“Of course you can have them if you wish. They aren’t much account, I expect, any way.”

John’s face fell rather at that expression of opinion. But still the shoes were of good stout leather, they had no holes in them, and he had heard his mother say that old Mrs. Barker had a very small foot. Threepence of his last week’s wages he spent on a pair of fleecy soles, which he put inside, and on Sunday night, without a word to his mother, he crept downstairs to offer his gift, and—strange as it may seem—to receive a longed-for parting word of council, and the blessing of one who had known his father, and respected him because his faith, like her own, was centred in their loving Lord and Guide and Saviour.

Had John’s mother been like those two, she might have had the highest crown of honour that a mother can have, that of knowing her child to be one of the brightest examples and the most respected in his neighbourhood. But she liked crooked paths, and she cared nought for the precept—“Train up a child in the way he should go.”

Mrs. Barker cried over him—the child she had held in her arms when he was not an hour old; she prayed for him, and most, fervently she implored God’s blessing upon him.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, in accents of the deepest tenderness—and she took his strong young hand in her withered ones, and held it close—“ the day may come yet, my dear, when you may be thankful to remember that never a day passed since first you were born that the old granny did not pray for you, that the Lord may beat down Satan under your feet.”

CHAPTER XVII
HOW ABOUT A CHARACTER?

Edith! Mamma!! Mabel!!! They are gone.” Will Reece’s voice had so risen with the exclamation of each name, that when he came to his last word breath failed him, and it faded away almost in a whisper.

Mabel, taking after her elder sister in the spirit of fun, ran and opened the piano, and, striking a succession of octaves, in her turn she shouted out the three names, suiting her clear young voice as well as she was able to the ascending shrillness of the notes, till she suddenly dropped down to the extreme bass with a sepulchral“Gone!”

“And that terrible noise too, I hope, my dear children,” said Mrs. Reece, laughing, as she dropped her hands again, which she had put up to protect her ears.

“Do you know, Willy, I really think that I must hire you out to a ‘cheap-Jack.’ It does seem quite a pity that your superabundant energy, and capacity for giving startling intelligence in a startling manner should be wasted. But now, who are gone? Both our horses out of the stable, or your friend Vyvian’s rabbits?”

Will laughed good-humouredly.

“Well, mamma, for the rabbits you have made a very good shot at a guess, for Yyv. has lost two of them. But,” and Will grew serious again,“it’s neither horses nor rabbits I was speaking of just now. They are human beings who are gone—the Turners, altogether, bag and baggage, and no one knows where.”

“Willy, my dear boy, you cannot mean it,” exclaimed Mrs. Reece.

“No, mamma,” said Edith in a voice’ divided between doubt and certainty,“really, he cannot mean it I was sitting with Mrs. Barker for some time on Saturday, and of course she would have told me if-”

“How could she, if she didn’t know?” interrupted her brother.“The whole affair has been kept as secret as secret. Mrs. Barker says that even she didn’t know till last night. And then Johnny asked her not to let it out to anyone, as his mother didn’t want to have any talkings or leave-takings. I know that no one else heard anything of it, except, I suppose, the landlord, for Mrs. Bennett was standing on her doorstep shouting out to a neighbour that the Turners had gone off as sly as the-”

Will caught himself up abruptly, cast a penitent glance at his mother, and left the room. The hard words he had heard Mrs. Bennett speaking so publicly had struck him as being very cruel and spiteful.

“Don’t hit a fellow when he’s down,” he had muttered to himself.. It was a very unpleasant discovery to him that he and Mrs. Bennett stood on the same level in this respect. He did not like the Turners, and Mrs. Bennett did not like the Turners, and so both he and she spoke ill of them whenever they could see or make an opportunity.

A few minutes after Will had left the room Edith once more had a message brought to her, that Charlie Bennett would be glad if he might speak to her for a moment. She would have beckoned him into a room as on the former occasion, but he shook his head.

“Please, miss, I mustn’t wait not an instant, so if I may just tell you out here. I had to come next door, so I asked if I might stop to tell you. I’ve got a new place, such a good one, and two shillings a week more wages, and such a good master, miss.”

Edith gave a bright smile of sympathy.“And where is it, Charley?”

“At Mr. Chesman’s, please, miss. Good-bye.”

And the little errand-boy had got the street door opened, and closed again behind him, before Miss Reece had recovered from her surprise and sorrow.

It was all very well for her favourite little Sunday-school pupil to have got a good place; but she would very much rather that place had not been John Turner’s. She mounted to the drawing-room again, feeling rather downcast. “I am afraid, mamma, that Will is quite right about the Turners. Charlie Bennett has got John’s place at Mr. Chesman’s. It is very strange altogether.”

Mrs. Reece also thought it very strange, and very ungrateful besides, when she found that it really was so—that Susan had gone away without bidding her good-bye, or giving her a word of information as to her new whereabouts.

“I know no more than you do, madam, where they can have gone to,” said worthy Mr. Chesman; “I can only assure you that they have certainly gone of their own free will, excepting in so far as the talk around here may have helped to drive them to try and make a fresh start amongst strangers.”

“ Still, Susan might have trusted me,” sighed Mrs. Reece, as she went home again.“I have always shown her kindness, and tried to be good to her. She might have trusted me to be gentle with her and her child”

But Susan was untrustworthy herself, and so she trusted none. Settled in her new abode, the next thing to be done was for her to find fresh customers for her skilful needle, and for John to obtain another situation. As for Susan, she was hard at work making a gown for her landlady the very first evening that was passed under a new roof. John’s desires took a little longer time for their accomplishment.

“I don’t believe that there is such a shop as a respectable butterman’s, able to pay decent wages to a boy, in the whole place,” he grumbled, crossly, the third day of his life in the Borough.

He had been on the tramp for some hours in the rain, and was tired out, wet through, and downhearted. His mother set to work briskly to cheer him up; bade him change his damp clothes, eat and drink, and rest. And then, when he began to look a little brighter, she began to laugh at him good-naturedly.

“Look here, you silly laddie! Do you think that your head and feet and hands are of no use to you unless you can use them in a butterman’s shop? I think, for my part, that you have had quite enough of that greasy business. I’d much rather that you should turn to something cleaner now.”

“I’m sure everything was clean enough at Chesman’s, mother,” said John. But all the same he showed a calmer face, and went on with his meal with a better appetite.

The thought occurred to him that he might perhaps get into something where he would have no temptations to indulge his besetting sin. He never attempted to pray for grace to withstand it.

“I’ll tell you what, John,” said Mrs. Turner, breaking a short silence,“I’ll tell you what, since you’ve so soon tired of idleness—we’ll make a sort of holiday of it to-morrow, and go about together, to see what looks a likely opening for you.”

“Oh, mother, will you really?” and the last shade disappeared from the boy’s face.

He had every confidence in his mother, and, in many respects, his confidence was justified. It was in the present instance.

Active, intelligent, and civil in manner, and accompanied by such a neat mother, young John was not long offering his services in vain. A linen-draper, of a second-rate shop, in a second-rate neighbourhood, but doing a good business, was much pleased with his bright and taking appearance.

“But you say he has never been out before?” he said to Mrs. Turner, dubiously.“That is tiresome —very tiresome.”

“Ah! sir,” said Susan, in a tone as civil and quiet as her son’s,“I do assure you, sir, that he is so attentive, and so quick, that you will not find that against him after the first couple of days. Perhaps if he had been out before he’d have learnt to be impudent, as other lads do.”

“ That’s true enough,” was the reflective answer, with another approving glance at the respectful attitude, which was the very thing to please lady customers.“But, you see—How about a character?”

CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. TURNER STARTLES HER SON.

“How about a character?”

Four very simple words, and spoken very quietly; but they struck like cold ice-drops for a moment into Susan Turner’s heart. For once in her life she had committed a great oversight.

She had spared no pains to take her boy away from the neighbourhood where he had got a bad character; but she had utterly forgotten that he would need a good one.

John had forgotten this necessity, too. Or, rather, having had nothing to do with it himself on obtaining Mr. Chesman’s situation, the matter had never occurred to his mind at alL

As the linendraper put this question Mrs. Turner seemed to feel, more than see, her son’s eyes look round at her with a sudden, anxious gaze which he could not suppress. It seemed to John for the minute as though all hope of ever again earning an honest livelihood were finally shut out from him.

The linendraper had been giving a half-attention to some letters spread before him on the table of his inner room, but the silence following his remark roused him more fully to the business especially on hand. He fixed his eyes sharply upon his companions, darting keen glances first at the lad, then at his mother.

“Hey?” he asked quickly.“Well, I say, how about a character? You don’t expect me to take your boy into my establishment without one, I suppose, do you?”

Mrs. Turner began to collect her wits. She folded her hands meekly, and curtsied.

“No, sir,” she said, in slow, rather sad tones.“At least I ought not. But yet I don’t see how ever my boy, or any other boy, is to get a first place if the first master won’t be satisfied without a character other than what his mother can give him.”

The tradesman’s grey eyes shone more keenly than before upon the speaker. But she stood quite placid beneath the scrutiny, and looked so innocent that he never supposed he was being imposed upon.

“Humph,” he muttered to himself; then aloud,“Of course, as this is your only child, and you’ve never tried to place him out before, you can’t be supposed to know all you will have to do, before you can get him taken on anywhere. If he had been in another situation, I would have applied to his late master. As it is, I shall be satisfied with the word of your clergyman, or a good report from his schoolmaster.”

As the word clergyman was uttered, Susan’s cheeks flushed hotly. She knew no clergyman at all but Mr. King, and she felt well assured that if he gave a character he would give the true one.

But the schoolmaster? Yes; he might have done, if he had not been already applied to for the recommendation which had obtained John Mr. Ches-man’s situation. On no account could he be applied to again, especially as Susan had just been assuring the linendraper, so seriously, that her son had never been in any service as yet. She felt herself thoroughly driven into a corner.

“I am very sorry,” she began—and there she hesitated, wondering how ever she could manage to get over this stumblingblock.

The cautious tradesman instantly noted the hesitation, and began as instantly to suspect that, as he privately expressed it,“there was a screw loose somewhere.” Under such circumstances, all the good manners in the world, agreeable looks, .and pleasant address, would go for nothing.

He was just about to rise, preparatory to bowing his companions off the premises, when a little daughter ran up to him, and leaning her curly head against his shoulder whispered shyly, but audibly enough to be heard by all present—

“Father, governess says she doesn’t like me wearing this cross. She says it is too solemn a thing for a sort of a plaything, as she calls mine.”

There was a slight start, and half-uttered exclamation from the other side of the small apartment. The child’s words had given Mrs. Turner an idea. Her half-cry was followed by a deep sigh.

“Ah! that is just it!” in a tone, apparently, of the most utter, weary sadness.“That is the case, sir. Your little girl’s governess does not like her to wear the cross, and you will not like us, for we have nothing to do with your clergymen, or your schoolmasters. We are Roman Catholics.”

It was fortunate for John Turner’s chances of the vacant place that the linendraper did not turn his eyes towards him, when his mother made this extraordinary and unexpected declaration of their religious faith. The expression of his face would have been laughable, but for the pity of the thing.

“How could you, mother!” he expostulated, as they were walking home twenty minutes later. He looked terribly vexed and shocked.

But Susan Turner retorted with an off-hand laugh. She had gained her end, and that was all she cared about.

“Gracious sakes, boy, what did it matter! We are as much that as anything else. And it served our turn. I guessed in an instant how it would be. Of course he didn’t want to go writing to any of the priests about you, and I don’t suppose he ever will. We are safe enough now you are to have a trial. You’ll give satisfaction fast enough.”

And she looked round at him with pardonable mother’s pride. But John felt by no means happy whatever she might be.

“And whatever am I to do now?” he blurted out, after a short silence, and in continuation of his own •mental cogitations.“How am I to act up to the part? In fact, of course, I can’t. And you’ve just let me in for a new set of cheating that’s bound to be found out at once.”

<• Mrs. Turner shrugged her shoulders.“Stuff and rubbish, child!” was her contemptuous reply.“All you’ve got to do is to do nothing, as you’ve always done before. And if folks bother you, say that you’ve never given your mind to these matters. Ah, there are lots of ways for you out of the scrape, if it is one.”

And Susan laughed as her fertile brain supplied her with fresh falsehoods to put into her son’s mouth.

“Tell people that your father was a Protestant though your mother is a Roman Catholic, and that as she didn’t like to go against what had been his wishes, as to your up-bringing, you’ve been brought up pretty much nothing as yet.”

John stifled a sigh, and nothing more was said on the subject until they reached home. The announcement his mother had made to his new master was the first reminder that John had received, for a long time, that there was any such thing as religion at all. His thoughts rested again upon that small purple-leather Bible, which he guarded with such secret care amongst his treasures, because it had the name of the father in the father’s own handwriting in it, of whom he had no memory, and no knowledge but what he had gleaned from his mother and Mrs. Barker.

His mother had tossed the book to him carelessly, one day, when he was seven or eight years old, with the offhand remark that he might keep it, if he liked in remembrance of his father.

No injunction to read it accompanied the gift; and, beyond now and again looking at the written words, John had contented himself with careful guardianship.

What his mother said was true enough—he had never given his mind to these matters; and he was as much a Roman Catholic as anything else in the way of religion, because he belonged neither to that faith nor to any other. He had none.

“It was different with my father,” he sighed again, drearily.“Ah! if my father had lived!”

But who shall say that, if his father had lived, John Turner would have shunned his mother’s evil and chosen his father’s good?

“If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead,” said our Lord in one of His parables, signifying that if the mercies and privileges already vouchsafed to us are neglected, greater ones would but share the same fate.

The measure of light John Turner had he refused to walk by. He preferred the darkness. So greatly did the Holy Spirit of Mercy,“who willeth not the death of a sinner,” wrestle with him, that he felt miserable and ill at ease; wretchedly dissatisfied with himself and his mode of life. But it was against the uneasiness that he fought, not against the cause.

He had fallen into absolute crime once, and once he had been mercifully spared from its due punishment; still more mercifully forced into for once seeing its enormity, and the earthly shame and ruin creeping in its train. He had escaped from the scene of it, from those who knew of it. He gained a fresh opening, a fresh start in life amongst those who were favourably impressed with him, fully ready to believe all things to his advantage. His conscience was awakened, the memory of his father’s Bible brought to his mind.

To many a one, like John Turner, a second opportunity is thus granted to leave the old things behind, and to rise to a new and better life. Alas! many, like this poor boy, turn their eyes from the light of the Sun of Righteousness, and choose to walk in darkness.

CHAPTER XIX
MRS. TURNER LIKES RIBBONS.

“Turner!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Oh! I didn’t know you were so near. Just take this box of odds and ends of ribbons, and measure them all off into yard lengths, and pin a ticket round each; and then I’ll come and price them.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do it directly.”

“Well, as soon as you can. But you must not keep customers waiting meantime. And there is one just come in—your mother, I think. Glad to see you, Mrs. Turner, because I can give you a good report of your son. He’s been very quick to learn his business, and his patience with the customers is most praiseworthy. Attend to your mother now, Turner, and mind you serve her well.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” said Susan, with her pleasantest smile.“But I shan’t need to try his temper very badly this morning. I’ve only come in for a couple of penny reels of cotton.”

“Then you need not take out your purse for that trifle,” said Mr. Dean, kindly; and then he walked away to another department—partly with a view to other business, partly with the gracious purpose to leave the mother and son free to have a few minutes’ quiet chat over the cotton-box.

Had he known everything he would have stayed beside them: and it would have been far better had he done so.

“What a sight of pretty ribbons you’ve got there, Jack,” said Mrs. Turner.“This one is a real beauty.”

And, tossing over the shallow basket’s gay contents, she picked up a handsome dark blue ribbon brocaded in gold.

“Just the very thing a bow of that would be for the neck of my new brown dress. What is it a yard?”

“Fifteenpence.”

“Fifteenpence? Ah! sevenpence halfpenny the. half. There’s a good many yards of it there, and— Johnny—”

Mrs. Turner dropped her voice, and cast a hasty glance round. She and her son were quite alone at that side of the shop.

“Johnny, it’s a very stretchy ribbon. In measuring it off it would pull out enough to leave plenty over for a bow.”

John’s face flushed, and he looked up quickly at his mother. He had been three months in this new place, and had utterly kept his hands from picking and stealing. He had won trust and liking, and had almost come to the resolve that for the future he would keep honest. But he trusted wholly to his own strength to resist temptation, and he had none.

Mrs. Turner lifted a second ribbon, looked at it longingly and significantly, then chose out the reels of cotton her son’s unsuspecting employer had given her, and went away.

She had given her child—her own child—a dose of poison for his soul, and she left it to wort John’s first impulsive feeling had been to treat his mother’s hints with utter disregard. He began measuring out the ribbons with scrupulous exactness, but thought ran riot in his brain meanwhile. The tempter was more busy than his fingers.

At length he got hold of a ribbon so loosely woven that it was really rather difficult, than otherwise, to measure it off fairly. It stretched without need for pulling. It was a common ribbon, but rather pretty, and a half yard“over,” was dropped stealthily down behind the counter. The deed was done now. It was easy enough, after that first theft, so to stretch the coveted brocade in cutting each yard as to have enough beyond the expected number to make up into a bow for his mother’s new Sunday dress.

When he got home that night he put his hand inside the breast of his waistcoat, and pulled out four short lengths of ribbon.

Susan’s eyes brightened, and she laughed as she took them from him.

“They are a bit tumbled, laddie dear. But there, that don’t not to say matter, for ironed between two handkerchiefs they’ll come right fast enough, and your mother ’ll be the richer for four nice bows, and no one else really a bit the worse, for what’s an inch off a yard of ribbon? ”

The inch off the ribbon might not be much, but John had a dark, secret consciousness that those inches of silk had set his feet many a long step forward, once more, on the broad road that leads to destruction.

CHAPTER XX
EDITH SIGHS, AND SO DOES SUSAN.

The canary was singing away loudly. The last rays of the setting sun were tinging the hair of Edith Reece with a bronzy gold, as she sat on a low stool at her mother’s feet By that hour on the morrow, if all went well, a greater separation would have come between the two than any that length of miles could make. The young daughter would no longer be Edith Reece, but Edith King, owing her chief duty and chief love to a husband, and would have become the promised light of another home.

But, even in these last hours of close and earnest talk between parent and child, selfishness had no place in those large and loving hearts. Deep as was Edith’s love for her bridegroom, great as was her rejoicing in the possession of the affection of one so upright and Christian-minded, she yet found room to think of others outside her own immediate circle.

Some of the most serious words that had passed between the pair that evening had been about the future work in schools and parish, among the young, the sad, and the suffering, in which Edith longed to prove herself a true help-meet for her husband. In the midst of one of her eager sentences, however, she had suddenly broken off with a sigh, and dropped her head with rather a weary air down on to her mother’s knees.

“My darling, what is it?” asked Mrs. Reece anxiously.“Are you beginning to feel frightened at the prospect before you?”

A slight sigh came again with the answer.“No, mother dear, not frightened, only a little disheartened all of a sudden.”

“Only a little tired and over-excited, you mean,” tenderly corrected the mother, as she stroked the soft wavy hair with fingers that began to tremble in spite of all efforts at self-control. Edith took them into her own hand, and kissed them.

“I don’t think it is that, mamma. But in the midst of my—my—boasting just now—of all I mean to do to make lives happier, and to make people better, came the recollection of poor Johnny Turner and poor Susan. It is scarcely possible that I can ever have greater opportunities of influencing anyone than we have had with them, and yet—and yet-!”

“Poor Susan seems to have strayed farther from the right path than when first I knew her,” said Mrs. Reece in a low tone, as ending to her daughter’s sentence. She, too, felt it difficult sometimes to repress a momentary pang of discouragement, when she thought of the Turners.

“I do wonder what has become of them, poor things,” she murmured, after a short pause.“It is a great trouble to me to have lost sight of them so utterly. But do not let us forget, my Edith, that the eye of the great Father is still upon them, and His mercy is infinite. It is His will that we should work in His vineyard. Let us trust Him that our work shall not be in vain.”

A few minutes later, father, brothers, and sisters, all came into the sitting-room, bent upon having as much time as possible with the home favourite on that last evening, and the quiet talk came to an end.

But perhaps even Susan Turner’s proud, passionate heart would have been touched had she known that the bright, sweet-faced girl had found time to sorrow for her and her boy on the very eve of her wedding-day.

But it scarcely ever occurred to Susan to think at all of her former most kind and indulgent mistress, or of that mistress’s children, except in the way of congratulating herself that she had, at last, got quite out of reach of a family whose strict integrity she felt to be a perpetual and most irritating reproach to her.

“What a beautiful crimson this ribbon is!” said Susan, smoothing over her fingers one of the halfyard lengths which Johnny had purloined in obedience to her hints.

Johnny looked up from his supper-plate, glanced from the rich-hued ribbon to his mother’s face.

“Yes,” he said, decidedly.“Quite the colour for you, mother. I knew it would be the moment I saw it. Much better wear for you than that gaudy thing you took such a fancy to have. Mr. Dean says as all dark people should wear reds and crimsons.”

Mrs. Turner smiled contentedly, as she twisted the silk up into a bow with her deft fingers.“ Some fair folks, too, look well in crimson, laddie. It used to set off Miss Edith rarely when she was a little one, and I make no doubt but it does now, Mr. King liked her in crimson, the servants say.”

“Umph!” growled John, shortly.

He had no greater taste than his mother for recalling thoughts of persons, places, or things connected with the Bayswater life. But for once Susan seemed bent upon continuing her reflections upon the family in Gloucester Terrace. She touched upon first one point, then another, till John turned restive.

“Whatever’s made you so awfully fond of them all of a sudden?” he ejaculated at last, sharply; in the middle of an anecdote of the Reeces’ nursery days, when she was a merry-tempered servant in the family, and always welcome upstairs. She looked half-abashed now at her boy’s question.

“Well, laddie, to tell you the truth I believe I was a bit fond of them, in those days before I’d you to think and fend for. And I’ve had my mind pretty full of them to-day, the memory coming to me that to-morrow’s Miss Edith’s wedding-day, according to what I heard had been fixed. And I suppose you and I would ha’ been up at the house if things had been as they were.”

And while Edith was sighing over the news she had heard of the Turners, from Charlie Bennett and old Mrs. Barker, Susan sat handling the stolen ribbons, and sighing over regretful thoughts of the morrow’s feasting she might have enjoyed, and the almost innumerable“pickings” with which she should have found opportunities, amidst all the bustle, to fill the pockets of herself and Johnny.

But John showed so much impatience at this especial topic of conversation that his mother dropped it after a few more words, and turned instead to the subject of their proposed next Sunday’s excursion.

Before she went to bed she sewed a safety pin on to the crimson bow, ready for wear.

CHAPTER XXI
ON THE PADDINGTON BRIDGE.

“Why mother, whatever can have come to you this morning?”

John’s eyes were staring widely at his mother, and his voice had an accent of half-frightened astonishment in it; and no wonder. To begin with the chapter of Mrs. Turner’s unusual doings, she had filled up the teapot with hot water without putting in the tea. Then she had placed a raw rasher of bacon on John’s plate, instead of a cooked one; she had buttered his bread both sides, and now he was barely in time to stop her putting a piled-up spoonful of salt into his cup, instead of a lump of sugar.

So startled was Jack’s exclamation at this last proof of wandering thoughts that Susan dropped spoon and salt together on to the table-cloth.

“Bless the boy!” she said, crossly. “Can’t your mother be allowed to make a mistake sometimes, as well as other folks, without being called over the coals this fashion by her own child?”

Just for the minute John was silenced by this impatient rebuff, but a few stealthy glances at the flushed cheeks opposite, and the agitated movements, increased his fears, and at last he ventured to put a second question in spite of the rebuke.

“Are you ill, mother?”

“I’ll, stuff! Never better in my life. But there, laddie, just get on with your breakfast, and don’t bother about me. I never took kindly to watchings nor questionings in my life, and I ain’t like to from you.”

So said Susan then, and she meant it on that particular morning, for reasons of her own. But, as a rule, if she had a headache, or was over-tired, she very much appreciated her son’s affectionate solicitude. John went off to business, greatly wondering as to the cause of her impatience now. He never guessed.

That last day of September was a clear, bright day, one of the gems of early autumn, and all that a bride could desire. Edith smiled at the sunlight through her tears; her mother gave silent thanks that all. nature looked so fair on her daughter’s bridal-day. Willy’s clear voice was heard singing about the house. The sunlight and clear air were to be thanked for that too, for they gave him courage to bear a brave face upon a day that he privately voted“a very horrid one.”

To tell the truth, for once in his life Master Will would have been almost glad to be a small girl, that he might take a small girl’s privilege of creeping into a comer and having a good cry. He thought home would be a very poor affair without“Eds” in it. But the sun shone, and there was a briskness in the atmosphere, and every healthy, honest young creature felt the cheering influence. The canary sang, and so did Will.

Susan felt the wholesome influence, too, in her way. When she first looked out of her window, after rising, she mentally ejaculated that—

“It was just the day for a holiday.”

Then the memories of the previous evening came back to her. This brilliant, laughing-looking day was Miss Edith’s wedding-day, and an irresistible longing to see the marriage came over Mrs. Turner.

She hated the idea of going back to the old neighbourhood again so soon. She dreaded the idea of being seen, perhaps spoken to, by some of her late neighbours; and yet minute by minute, as she dressed, the wish to be present in Trinity Church that morning grew stronger; so strong at last that she decided to go. But she dared not tell John, and so, what with her secret, and a whole crowd of other agitating thoughts, it was little wonder that John found his mother less methodical and precise than usual in her doings.

Out of doors Susan was scarcely less excited than she had been at home. Although she locked up her rooms and set out scarcely half an hour after John started for the linendraper’s shop, she immediately began to torment herself with the fancy that she should reach the church too late.

When she got out of her second omnibus at the corner of Praed Street, in the Edgeware Eoad, she ran on up the Harrow Road as if she were flying for a doctor to attend some vital case.

The slight hill of the canal bridge moderated her speed a little, but she was still going so quickly as to come with a great shock against a smaller human being, marching on in front of her with very sedate steps.

“Have a care, young woman!” shouted a man, at the same time stretching out a stalwart arm just soon enough to save the smaller being from toppling forward on his nose.

Of the group of three all looked more or less put out of temper.

“Han’t you got no eyes?” said the man, brusquely addressing Susan again.“Ye might ha’ broke ter lad’s legs or his neck.”

“Why couldn’t the stupid little lout get out of the way, then?” was the equally brusque answer.

“Don’t you see?” came the somewhat piteous question from the“stupid little lout” himself.

And then, for the first time, Susan’s excited eyes did see that the boy she had so nearly run down was carrying in his arms a huge flower-pot containing a rose-tree almost as tall as himself, with several buds on it.

“But—but,” and there came a half-sob into Charlie Bennett’s voice. His eyes were resting on the pavement at his feet, now strewed with the scattered petals of what must evidently have been a splendid yellow one.“But—but—there was only one full-blown rose on my tree, and now that is gone, after all my care.”

“Never mind, my lad!” said the carter, with sympathetic kindness.“It’ll sell just as well.”

Charlie looked up with flushed cheeks.“Sell!

It’s for Miss Ed-, I mean, it isn’t to sell. It’s to give away to somebody.”

“All right,” was the smiling answer. “ Whatever it’s for, it’s a beautiful plant still; so cheer up, youngster, and keep out o’ the way o’ them as is in over much of a hurry, till you’ve got quit of it.” Then his new friend passed on, leaving Charlie and Susan Turner together.

Charlie Bennett with his rose-tree, and Susan Turner with her eager impatience to get to Trinity Church, stood silently facing each other for some few moments after the carter had left them.

Charlie stood there because he felt so loth to part company with the lovely flower he had hoped to carry in safety to his dear Miss Edith. Susan stood there because she had caught his half-ejaculation of“Miss E-,” and although she did not know Charlie, and there were certainly many Miss E.’s in the world, the train of her own thoughts led her, naturally enough, to connect the initial with her Miss Edith Reece. After slight hesitation she said, inquisitively—

“What Miss E. is that rose for? I know a Miss E. A Miss Edith, who’s, maybe, going to be married to-day.”

Charlie’s face brightened up again.“Yes, she is. And this is my wedding-present to her. But I must be quick now, in getting it to Gloucester Terrace, for master said I musn’t be also long away from business.”

And then Charlie also went on his way, not greatly surprised that the stranger woman should know about his Miss Edith. It would not have much astonished him to find that all the passers-by were acquainted with that young lady. He would only have thought them very fortunate individuals.

Susan reached the church just as the clock was striking ten, and found the doors were not yet open. She went to Scott’s, the baker, bought a bun, and sat down with her back to the street, the better to avoid being seen and possibly recognised by any of her old acquaintances, and waited until the half-hour struck, when she crossed over to the church again and entered with the pew-opener. No need to fear any of the people belonging to that church, or to any other, knowing her. She had not entered one before for years.

Charlie Bennett marched on with his great flowerpot to the well-known house in Gloucester Terrace. As he walked on, a pair of brown eyes as quick as his own caught sight of him. The little flower-girl was sitting on the curb-stone with a companion, arranging her bouquets for the day’s sale.

She said a few quick words to her friend, laid down her handful of blossoms and fine wire, and ran after Charlie.

He was almost as much startled by her as he had been by Susan Turner, when she pleaded suddenly, just beside him—

“Please, will you let me carry that for you? I should like. I’m more in the way o’ carryin’ about them sort of things than you are.”

Little Bennett’s first answer to this appeal was to clasp his arms more tightly around his precious burden, as though he feared it was to be taken from him by force. But the next moment he gave the child another of those kind, bright smiles which had won her gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said,“but I like to carry it myself. It is for some one who has been very good to me. But I shall be very much obliged to you if you will come and ring that bell for me over there.”

CHAPTER XXII
IN TRINITY CHURCH.

Time does seem to move with such very heavy feet when one is waiting for anything.

Susan Turner had leisure to make and break twenty half-minds, to be off back to Canon-road before eleven o’clock struck, and the first of the wedding party appeared.

On entering the church she had hastily squeezed herself into the extreme corner of one of the side aisles.“But I shan’t be able to see anything here —might as well have stopped at home,” she muttered the next minute. She cast a look up at the gallery.“Yes, that would be better.” She forthwith mounted.

“Ah, you’ve got the best place for seeing as anybody ’ull be able to get,” called up one of the pew-openers, catching sight of the solitary stranger.“You’ll see everybody.”

“Yes,” answered down Susan shortly.

The pew-opener was quite right. All the same, the person she had so congratulated on a wise choice of position came down from the gallery almost as soon as she had disappeared into the vestry, and took up the former position in the side aisle corner.

It had suddenly become plain to Mrs. Turner that while the gallery was a good place for seeing, it was also the best place almost in the church for being seen.

“That hateful, impertinent Mrs. Bennett is nigh upon sure to come up here,” reflected Susan, and the reflection quickened her steps downwards.“More than half wish now that I hadn’t come, after all. How wild Johnny would be if he knew!”

Then she sat down with her back resting comfortably against the wall, and waited with what amount of patience she could muster. Mrs. Bennett forgotten, the next sense of irritation was the sunlight. She had felt pleased with the brightness an hour or so ago, but now she seemed to think it was lighting up the church for her especial aggravation. Not the dimmest corner in the church was dark enough for her peace of mind. Her conscience was ill at ease, and she loved darkness rather than the light. Once more her lips began unconsciously to form the words—

“After all I wish I’d stayed a-”

But there was a sound of wheels on the gravel outside; the pew-openers got into a state of delighted excitement and bustle, and flew towards the door with the exclamation—

“There they come!”

Susan got excited too; forgot about herself and her fears of being recognised, and craned her neck forward to see the newcomers. Two of them she knew—aunts of Miss Edith’s; two were strangers.

They passed up the middle aisle. Other people came in, friends and spectators, poor and rich. Then the bridesmaids, Silvia and Eva Reece, and Mr. King’s two sisters.

Mrs. Turner was all eagerness to see how their dresses were made, and pressed up the church. She never saw Master Will’s quick eyes light upon her, nor perceived when her former mistress entered the church and exchanged a few words with that young gentleman.

“Shall I tell her you want to speak to her, mamma?” whispered Will.

Mrs. Reece thought for a moment.“No, dear. I am afraid that would be worse than no good. Edith will not be here for another three or four minutes. I will go to her myself.”

And while Susan’s head was turned to the door, to get the earliest possible glimpse of the bride, she was startled by the gentle touch of a fawn-gloved hand upon her arm.

“Susan,” said a low, kind voice,“I am so thankful to see you again. How is poor Johnny? ”

There was a deep tenderness in the tones betokening true friendship, and that might have won any soul to softness; but Susan’s heart was full of pride and hardness. The very compassion in Mrs. Reece’s voice roused her resentment. She dropped her arm back sharply.

“John is very well, thank you, ma’am. Very well, and happy and comfortable; and much thought upon in his situation.”

“I am so thankful,” was the earnest answer.

“But remember, Susan, if ever the time should arrive that either he or you want a friend, trust my care for you both, and come to me. Ah, there is Miss Edith; I must go back to my place. Good-bye, and God bless you.”

Mrs. Reece’s sweet, kind voice had scarcely faded from Susan’s ears when far other sounds fell upon them. Hissing, spiteful tones that made her wince as though she had been stung by a wasp, or beaten with stinging nettles.

The speaker was not a yard away from her, and took no pains, certainly, to prevent the object of her speech hearing it.

“My patience me, Mrs. Duncan, just to see the assurance of some folks! There’s that Mrs. Turner back here already among us all, and not a month gone since she had to run away with that thieving little blackguard of a boy of hers. Did you ever know such impudence?”

Desperately did Susan try to turn, and face her enemy with a withering stare. But it was no good. Her courage was not equal to it before all that knot of watching, whispering women. The worst she had to fear in coming here had befallen her, and, before the marriage service was over, she had slunk out of the church, and was on her way back to Cannon Road, Blackfriars.

John found it almost more difficult to understand or in any way account for his mother’s fit of very bad temper that night, than he had found her unusual absent-mindedness in the morning difficult of comprehension.

He made several attempts to win her over to pleasantness when he first got home to supper; but they were of no avail, and came to an abrupt end at last, when she broke in upon one of his well-meant efforts with the passionate ejaculation, apparently apropos of nothing—

“To think that I should have but one child, and that child a fool!”

John got a book then, and spoke not another word until he said“good-night” and went to bed. The only explanation he hit upon for his mother’s ill-humour was his having failed to bring her home to-day any fresh pickings from his master’s shop. A dismal explanation, and one that produced fresh fruit of sin, for John loved his mother, and he liked a cheerful home.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE SCAPEGOAT.

John Turner had been about a year in his second place when, from time to time, various small articles began to be missed from the shop. Now a pair of stockings, another day a remnant of fine white linen, then a lace collar, a box or two of paper cuffs, and so on, now from one department, now from another.

The missing goods were little things, all of them, and of no great value; but their loss was sufficient to annoy Mr. Dean, and to arouse his suspicions of everybody about him.

He set up a very careful watch on his customers, and then of his employes. Altogether there was“such a fuss,” as the young men and women in the linendraper’s service, thoughtlessly or foolishly, described his natural anxiety to stop the thefts, that a good many of them gave notice to leave. Amongst the number was John Turner.

“I don’t see why you should want to go,” said one of his companions, half jealously.“You are the pet and prime minister of the establishment, it seems to me. You’ve not been called upon to put up with any of these unpleasant spyings that the rest of us have to bear.”

John shrugged his shoulders with an air of easy good-humour.“It’s a shame that anybody should have had to bear them. And you don’t suppose that I’ve been all these months with you all without feeling that I shouldn’t like to go on working in the same place with a lot of strangers around me? No, no; if you go, I’ll go too.”

That was what he said to his companions at the shop: at home he said to his mother, in tones of peculiar significance—

“I shall be able to do no more good there. I’d better leave while suspicion is wide of the mark.”

Mrs. Turner looked rather dubious.“It is a very good situation, John.”

John raised his eyebrows with slight contempt.“Oh, well, mother, so so, for that matter. Fair enough no doubt, but there are plenty of others as good, and better, for a fellow like me.”

Susan smiled as she let her eyes rest upon her curly-headed boy. Not yet seventeen years of .age, he might have been taken for nineteen or twenty. He was well grown, tall, and much above the average in manners and personal appearance. He had been quite the show shopman at Mr. Dean’s from the commencement of his engagement, and could sell more to customers than any of his companions. His salary had been raised twice. Mr. Dean had taken a great fancy to him, and had already entertained many private dreams of a future day when he would take the clever, active, pleasant young fellow into partnership.

Little poor Mr. Dean guessed that the good-looking, smiling youth was a mean thief—a wretched creature whose hands were as keen and ready at the cowardly, base trade of picking and stealing as those of the most degraded, untaught sharer of a thieves’ kitchen.

For them there may be at least the excuse that they have the temptation, and have never been shown“the way to escape;” for John Turner there was none.

“Mr. Dean sets great store by you, laddie dear,” said Mrs. Turner, by way of wind-up to her scrutiny.

“Just so,” was the contented answer.“I stand so high in his favour that he’s downright bound to give me a first-rate recommendation elsewhere. I couldn’t leave at a better time.”

Jack was right there. So high in favour did he stand that his unsuspecting master tried hard to retain him in his service; but, in spite of his disappointment when he failed to do so, he did feel bound in justice, as John had foreseen, to speak very well for him to the head of a far higher class of establishment than his own, where young Turner next got employment.

The sphere of his daily labours was in Oxford Street this time, and the home was moved once more for his convenience. Mrs. Turner got skirtmaking work from the same establishment, and when her skill and taste were discovered some of the mantles were put into her hands. The earning3 of the mother and son were amply sufficient to supply them with every reasonable comfort; but still—they wanted a little more.

One sin leads to another. When John had been fourteen or fifteen months in this third place, he had so managed his petty thefts there as to cause suspicion to fall upon another person—a poor young companion, utterly innocent of the slightest taint of dishonesty, but whose blundering stupidity had made him an easy and helpless tool.

The poor fellow was dismissed with open ignominy and a ruined name. Turner showed as much outward incredulity as any one to his despairing protestations of blamelessness, and ignorance of the charges laid to him. He was turned away, and with none to give him a pitying word, or a helping hand to find daily bread for the future.

The real culprit, growing harder in heart and mind day by day by continuance in evil doing, and more dead in soul, restrained his fingers for some time from any more thefts—not for duty’s sake, or shame’s sake; but for the sake of prudence.

It would not have done for anything more to be missed for some time after the scapegoat had been turned off the premises. A fresh set of suspicions would too surely have arisen, which might have had a more true result.

“I declare I haven’t a pair of stockings fit to wear,” grumbled Susan Turner discontentedly one Saturday evening about this time.

A frown gathered on John’s forehead, but he went on reading, and said nothing. Mrs. Turner pushed her hand irritably into the torn heel of another stocking.

“A lovely lot of brown merinoes that was, Jack, as you was turning over this morning when 1 passed through the shop.”

“Yes,” answered Jack, without looking up.“They are to go into the sale next week at two shillings a pair. I’d advise you to buy a couple of pairs. They’re every bit worth the money.”

“Umph!” ejaculated Susan shortly.“Very likely. But one pair would do me—at least I’d make it, for best, and two shillings is two shillings.” Then John looked up, still with that frown on his brow.“Yes, mother, two shillings is two shillings, and jail is jail. And I am not going to get into trouble for two shillings, nor yet for four neither. Now that lout’s got sent to the right-about, things will have to rest as smooth as a mill-pond a bit, unless you wish to see me sent packing hot-foot after him, or a step lower still, more like.”

After this Mrs. Turner said no more in the way of hints, but set-to to darn up her old stockings with a sort of air of virtuous resignation on her face, as if she were voluntarily giving up something that she might quite justly have laid claim to. She cast about in her mind for a freer topic of conversation.

“Do you know, John, I saw Mrs. Reece and Miss Edith—I mean Mrs. Frank King—in Oxford Street, to-day.”

“So did I,” said John quickly, and his face flushed.“They came into our place, and with Mrs. King’s baby and the nurse with them.”

Susan was more interested than annoyed at the news. Nearly three years had passed since that trouble at Mr. Chesman’s. She had almost forgotten the affair, and she expected others to have done so entirely. But John had not. That time of disgrace and humiliation was still as fresh as ever in his memory. With all his mad efforts, conscience was not killed yet.

“Did you serve them?” asked his mother, with eager curiosity.“Did they buy anything very handsome?”

“Oh, very,” came the answer with a short laugh.“Remnants of flannel, I believe, for ragged-school children’s petticoats, and check dusters for them to hem. But, thank goodness, I had nothing to do with them. I only saw them at the opposite counter. The baby made a great row.”

“What, crying and screaming?”

“No. Chuckling and shouting—just as bad. ‘What a beautiful-tempered child! ’ an old lady exclaimed, I was serving with black satin. And she kept me dawdling while she went across to kiss it.”“Poor laddie!” said his mother, laughing.“I wonder how the child was dressed. Miss Edith used to have very good taste.”

But on that point John could give no information. Mrs. King herself, he had noticed, was dressed in sage-green serge, and bonnet to match, and that was all he knew of that family’s costume.

“I saw somebody else, mother, to-day—Jim Bennett, driving a lady’s Victoria, and looking as set up as you please, conceited prig that he is.”

Mrs. Turner tossed up her head.“There, child, for goodness’ sake don’t let’s talk of them Bennetts. The name always puts a bad taste in my mouth and sets my back up. Isn’t there ere a bit of news in the paper you can read a body?”

Not long after this conversation an opportunity occurred for the clever, intelligent young assistant to make another change as to the place of his daily work, and with great advantage both as to position and salary.

To tell the truth he was not exactly sorry to quit the scene of his late cruel exploits. Memory would be troublesome occasionally.

In John Turner’s fourth place of business numerous articles of considerable value were amongst the stores of merchandise—costly laces, and also watches, gold chains, trinkets, and jewelry of all descriptions. The first time his eyes fell on the cases sparkling with their precious contents covetousness leapt into his heart; and when, after no long time, he was made the custodian of their contents, in consideration of the exceedingly high character he had received from his late employer, he walked home with steps as buoyant as though some good fortune, won by his integrity, had fallen to his share.

But the climax was approaching now.

CHAPTER XXIV
MR. BRAMSTON BUYS AN ENGAGEMENT RING.

With each change of place John Turner had, as the common saying is,“bettered himself.” That is to say, he had improved his worldly prospects, for, as regarded his own personality, he had decidedly grown rather worse than better, as has been already seen. But he and Mrs. Turner both considered that he had done very well.

When still only in his twenty-first year, he was drawing a monthly salary sufficient to keep himself and his mother in comfort, and, with the addition of her earnings by her needle, they were able to indulge many of the extravagant tastes they had fostered for dress and show.

But honesty and contentment were two of the tastes which they had not cherished. Stolen waters were far sweeter to them than those they had a right to. And as for contentment, they rather despised that virtue. The more they had, the more they wanted. Susan Turner had always coveted her neighbour’s goods from childhood upwards, and she had done her best to teach her son to follow in her footsteps.

Several times within the past five years there had been a change of home, and, wherever John and his mother went, the little purple-leather Bible went. But it was never looked into nowadays. After that affair in his third situation, when the innocent suffered for the guilty, John had tied up his father’s Bible in brown paper, and it had never been unfolded since. It had an uncomfortable knack of always falling open just where that text was written inside the cover:—

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.”

Turner had a double dread of seeing those words now, for his poor victim had quoted them in his despair.

“My mother bid me keep my good name, whatever else I lost,” he had moaned piteously.“And I have tried so hard, and now some one has robbed me of it, and it’ll be the death of her.”

Whenever Turner saw the text after that, a chill wonder used to creep involuntarily into his mind, whether his unhappy scapegoat’s mother had died of a broken heart. So he did up his Bible in brown paper and put it as far as possible out of sight. The jewels and gold in the cases at the silkmercer’s were much pleasanter things to look at, and more to be desired too, he considered, than even a good name.

Meantime, however, John was glad enough to have a good name, although he did not deserve it. In all the great establishment, to which he now belonged, there was no one so much liked for his good temper, activity, and readiness to oblige both his employers, his companions, and customers as the good-looking young Turner.

When John was not busy in his own department he was always ready to lend a helping hand anywhere else that there might be a stress of business, and this without ever seeming tired or getting out of temper, so that it became a usual thing to find him in all parts of the shop.

One day, however, he respectfully intimated to the partners that this state of things must cease.

“You will, I am sure,” he said, with grave earnestness—“you will, I am sure, agree with me that it must.”

And the partners sighed and assented, and did agree that perhaps it had better for a while.

A valuable lace scarf for the neck had been lost. It had certainly been carried off by a very questionable-looking customer, all but one person fully believed. But nevertheless, Turner said, under the circumstances, he felt that looking after the safety of the important goods under his own especial charge would be as much responsibility as he could undertake for the future.

The two gentlemen, who so kindly received their esteemed young assistant’s respectful announcement, would have been indeed astonished had any one been able to tell them that their lost scarf was at that moment in the possession of Susan Turner, and that her son had devoted the watchfulness of many days to finding a secure moment in which to steal it for her.

The miserable lessons of his childhood were bearing awful fruit. He was growing an adept in duplicity as well as in thieving. He knew now, even better than his mother, the arts by which to turn suspicion aside, and when it should suit his purpose he could easily find plausible reasons for resuming his old run of the departments of the establishment. At least, so he thought.

Time passed on.

It was nearly six years since that fateful August when John Turner’s first crime was discovered, and so mercifully pardoned, by Mr. Chesman. It wanted but a few days now to another Bank holiday, that of Whitsuntide, when a gentleman stood for some time looking over the tempting articles in the jewelry cases attended to by John Turner.

“What may I have the pleasure of showing you, sir?” came the civil question as the stranger’s eyes wandered hither and thither over the bright display. For a moment or two there was no answer, and the shopman added politely, as though to assist the customer’s choice:—

“Watches, sir? Chains? We have some splendid watches at the present time in stock, if you will allow me to show you some.”

A certain touch of hardly-restrained eagerness in the latter words aroused the gentleman’s attention at last to his companion, and he looked up hastily with the slightly-nervous reply:—

“No no, thank you. I don’t want watches. Nothing of that sort. It’s rings—it’s rings—ladies’ rings I wish to look at”

“Ah! certainly, sir; immediately. We have a splendid assortment,” said John with alacrity.

Nothing could possibly have chimed in better with his wishes just then than having to serve a shy and nervous customer, too much preoccupied to give special heed to the doings of those about him.

Nothing could exceed Turner’s painstaking care to help his customer in his choice. The gentleman often spoke of him afterwards as“a most obliging fellow, and trustful to a degree.”

“Who could help trusting you? ’’ said Eva Reece, with affectionate pride, as she raised her eyes from the diamonds and emeralds of her new engagement ring to her lover’s handsome face.

But, without waiting to hear the answer to that question, we must return to the hour of the ring’s purchase, and the silkmercers shop.

John Turner very quickly discovered that ladies’ rings were not only the articles that his customer had come especially to look at; but that they were evidently the only things at the minute in which he took the slightest interest. But, for all that, tray upon tray full of other articles was drawn from beneath the glass covers, as though John were more than usually zealous in his employers’ interests. Amongst other things, he brought out a number of the valuable watches to which he had at first called attention.

“There sir,” he said with an inviting tone.“Do let me recommend you to give just a look at these for some future time, even if you do not care to be a purchaser at the moment. I assure you they are first-rate.”

So adjured, the stranger picked up one of the watches, the first his fingers came to, and without in the least heeding what he had got in his hand, or what he was about, he held it for a few seconds suspended against his waistcoat, staring down at it. One or two of the assistants, as they passed to and fro, caught sight of the unconscious act, and nudged each other, and chuckled.

“Wants a locket to hold his lady-love’s hair,” muttered one.

As a fact the object of the merriment was wondering whether Eva Reece would let him put the ring on her finger that evening, when he reached her present abiding-place in Norfolk, or if she would exercise her teasing powers, and make him wait until the next day.

“If she is too provoking I shall appeal to her sister, Mrs. King: she is always ready to stand my friend,” was the young barrister’s final meditation on the point, and then he suddenly recollected where he was, and that he was keeping that most obliging and patient of all young shopmen waiting upon him a most unconscionable time. He laid the watch down hurriedly.

“No, thank you,” he said.“I am much obliged. Some other time, as you say, perhaps; but to-day I want nothing but the ring; and I am rather pressed for time. I have to catch a train. I should like a case for this.”

He held out the ring he had chosen as he spoke, and drew forth his purse at the same time.“ How much did you say it is?” he asked.

John mentioned the price.“At least,” he said with a smiling bow,“that is the sum we have to put upon it, you know, to save ourselves from probable loss of a due profit; but for ready money there is a discount always allowed, although not always of the same amount.”

“No, no—I see, of course,” agreed the customer, without seeing at all. He had not even heard any of the last part of the shopman’s speech, for his brain was quite in cloudland. He had never bought a ring for a lady before, and he found the performance most damaging to presence of mind. He had just managed to take in the sum of money he was indebted for his purchase, and that was all. He laid down the proper amount on the counter, and then, although he had asked for a case, he forgot that he had done so, and pocketed his precious ring without even a paper wrapper.

“Good morning,” he said, in a tone of relief that the affair was well over. He was both perplexed and worried when John said, smilingly—

“ One moment, sir. I’ll scarcely keep you more, but I must not take the money without giving you a stamped receipt, you remember, and I must just trouble you for the ring back again a minute, and ask the partners about that discount.”

And then, with a carelessness most unusual with him, John Turner left the various trays of valuables, watches, chains, and all, still lying spread upon the top of the cases and the counter, and carried the diamond and emerald ring just purchased some way down the shop, to where one of the principals of the establishment was standing talking busily with a trade buyer.

The ring—in a case this time—had been restored to the barrister’s pocket, and also some of the money he had so readily given for its purchase; and he had reached the King’s Cross Railway Station when suddenly the even tenor of events in the great linen-drapers’ establishment was disturbed.

The eyes, both of customers and assistants, were attracted by the sight of one of the shopmen hurrying up the centre, with a face betraying the most profound anxiety.

CHAPTER XXV
AT FRANK KING’S COUNTRY VICARAGE.

“Is Miss Eva Reece at home?”

“Please, sir,” said the little white-aproned maid, dropping a curtsy.“If you please, sir, no; she’s here.”

“Yes, I know that,” answered the purchaser of the engagement ring, with a smile.“But I mean, is she indoors?”

“Please, sir, no. Miss Eva is out, and missus too.”

“Oh-h!” Rather a long“oh-h” that was, and the gentleman’s face grew rather downcast.“Out together, I suppose you mean, Milly?”

“Oh, please, sir, no,” came the quick answer.“Missis is gone to read to the working class at the schools. And when Miss Eva went out, a little while after missus, she sang out to me that she was going over the hills and far away. But she put some fresh flowers in your room first, sir.”

All the gloom was gone now from the hearer’s face. He smiled with amusement, as well as satisfaction, as he said:

“Ah! well, Milly, in that case I had better make haste after her, or she may have run away too far to be caught, and brought back in time for tea.”

And while George Bramston goes in pursuit of his lady-love, pretty well aware of the road she will have chosen, a few words must be said as to how affairs have gone with our friends, of late, and why we find some of them domiciled in Norfolk instead of in London.

After working amongst the poor of two London parishes with earnestness and heartiness, for twelve years, Frank King was offered a living in the country, and felt justified in accepting it. Accordingly, six months before George Bramston bought a lady’s ring, Mr. King, his wife, and their three little ones took up their abode in a vicarage, in the parish of which Mr. Bramston’s father was the squire.

Eva Reece had accompanied her sister to help in getting the pretty new home into habitable order, and the squire’s son and the vicar’s sister-in-law had made friends with each other in the speediest manner possible.

“It was a case of love at first sight,” George was most willing to confess as regarded himself. As for Eva, she mischievously declared that until she came to Cawton the second time, to assist in the Christmas church decorations, she had only thought Mr. George a fairly passable young man, and she did not quite know whether she thought him much more now.

But she was not always in this saucy mood. Very far from it, indeed, when her lover found her that May day on the old felled tree in the wood, where she had promised him that“some time or other she would become his wife. When Mr. Bramston caught sight of her now, she was sitting with the rich-coloured brunette cheeks buried in her hands, and he heard the soft sound of sobs. Another minute and he was beside her, and the wet cheeks were hidden against his shoulder, whilst he held the girl’s trembling hands in his own.

“What is the matter, Birdie?” he asked, tenderly.“You must tell me all your troubles now, you know.”

She raised her face to his, smiling through her tears.“Yes, master mine, I know. At least, I ought to. You have told me so before. But I have no trouble at the present hour to regale you with.”

The reply to that was a reproof in words, but a caress in tone—“Then, you bad child, why do you frighten me with sobs and tears?”

Eva laid her head back on its former resting-place.

“I was so happy, George, that I felt as if I might . afford myself a little misery. I was wondering whatever I should do if—if-”

The clear voice began to get low and tremble, and she stopped.

George Bramston bent his head lower over hers.“Yes, Birdie, dearest, if—if what?”

The answer came in only the merest little whisper then.“If you never came back to me again. And . I found that I could do nothing, even with the thought, but cry.”

After that admission the ring-purchaser found very small difficulty in insisting upon transferring its ownership from himself to somebody else, and ho soon had the satisfaction of admiring the sparkle of the diamond, to which John Turner had called his attention, upon the finger of Miss Eva Reece“You are my property now,” said George, resolutely. Whereupon the young lady sprang away from him up on to her feet, with the retort,

“Very well, then, slave-owner, I believe by the laws of England I can have you fined. Meantime, I am under orders from my small nephew to return home in time to have a game with him in the garden before tea—so, good-bye.”

But the good-bye was/of course, all nonsense. The pair returned to the vicarage hand-in-hand, and it took them so long to get back that the playtime before tea, as far as it depended upon the young aunt, threatened to be a rather shadowy affair. Fortunately for little Frankie and his brothers, there were other people in their neighbourhood with more disengaged minds to attend upon their wishes. As Eva and Mr. Bramston approached the vicarage domain, peals of laughter fell upon their ears, and unexpected shouts of“Char—lie, Char—lie, Shar— lee, Shar—lee!” mixed with cries of“Mil—lie, he’s dere, he’s dere—no, now he’s dere.”

Eva ran forward to learn the cause of the unusual excitement and glee. Our old friend Edith, Mrs. King, appeared at the gate at the same moment. She smiled as she saw her sister.

“Ah Eva, I thought you would be found, in spite of Milly’s information as to your proposed distant travels. How do you do, Mr. Bramston? Please come in, if you are not afraid of my uproarious little ones making you quite deaf. They are in a high state of glee this evening, for a very especial friend of theirs has just arrived here from town. He must have come by your train, I suppose.”

George Bramston looked across the lawn to where a young man was playing a game of“catch who catch can” with the vicarage children and the little under-nursemaid, Milly. Mrs. King turned to her sister.

“Mr. Chesman has given Charles Bennett a week’s holiday, and sent him down here to spend it with some of Mrs. Chesman’s relatives. The whole of that family make so much of him that it is well he is not inclined to vanity.”

“Has your paragon any fault?” asked Eva, laughing. “ Is it not well that he is not inclined to anything but perfection?”

“Like your paragon yonder, Milly—hey?” was the smiling retort.“But look, Frankie sees you, and is screaming himself hoarse to tell you somethin Eva ran across to meet her nephew, while Mr. Bramston asked who this wonderful Charles Bennett might be, who seemed such a general favourite. His life’s history up to the present date was quickly told.

“And,” said Mrs. King, in conclusion,“the promise of his honest, unselfish boyhood has been hitherto most beautifully kept. My husband says that he has already done as much good as many a young clergyman, and yet he has a blind sister almost entirely dependent upon him for support. But she helps him, too, in his labours amongst those more helpless than themselves.”

As Edith uttered these last words earnestly, her little boy drew near, clinging to Eva’s arm.

“Mamma,” he exclaimed,“mamma, auntie wants to ask you something.”

“Or rather,” came the laughing correction,“you want auntie to. But never mind, auntie will. The children want to know, Edith, if they may ask Charles Bennett to tea with them. They say that they wish it very much,’ and they are quite sure that Emily wishes it even more.”

“Is Milly his sister?” asked George Bramston.

There was a chorus of astonishment at the question.

“Charles Bennett’s sister? Of course, not!”

CHAPTER XXVI
HAPPY PEOPLE AND A PLEASANT HOME.

Our last chapter ended ‘with the surprise occasioned by a question of Mr. Bramston’s as to the Kings’ little nursemaid and general help, Milly Crid.

Having heard that the child was so anxious to have Charles Bennett stay to tea, it was really natural enough to suppose she was his sister, but gentle Edith King looked almost indignant at the idea.

“The Bennetts’ relations are all most highly respectable people,” she said, earnestly.“Some of them are really quite well-to-do.”

“I can thoroughly believe it,” was George Bramston’s courteous answer.“But—I beg your pardon if I am proving myself to be very stupid—why is the respectability of the Bennetts any proof that yonder most pleasant-faced young girl cannot belong to the charmed circle of their relatives?”

As answer to this question Eva put another one—

“But don’t you truly know, then, George, who little Milly is?”

“Yes, don’t you know?” put in Frankie, eagerly.“Don’t you know that she’s-”

“That she’s a happy young woman, with three mischievous young monkeys to look after. Yes, you see I know what she is as well as you.”

Frankie looked posed for a moment, then his face brightened, and he shouted triumphantly—

“Then, if you know what she is, I don’t b’lieve you knows what she was! a poor little flower-girl, out in all the cold and the snow, and the funder an’ lightnin.’ And with old shoes and no ’tockings, an’ dry bread, an’ never any puddings. But, good-bye, now, they’ll all be wanting me to play, I know.”

With which consequential remark Mrs. King’s eldest son carried his bright eyes, and his head of sunny little curls, back to the other side of the lawn again, leaving his mamma and aunt to finish the biography he had begun so graphically.

“Yes, it is all true what Frankie has told you,” said Mrs. King, in answer to a questioning look from her guest.“We first made acquaintance with Milly on my wedding-day.”

“What!” asked Mr. Bramston,“had you eyes and thoughts for a flower-seller at such a time as that?”

Edith smiled and blushed.“Well,” she said,“perhaps I should say ‘they ’ instead of we. But I mean that our family first noticed her on that day. It was my brother Will and Eva who spoke to her.”

And then the clergyman’s wife saw her husband beckoning to her from his study window, and she left her sister to tell the remainder of the tale, of how Will, gazing somewhat dolefully from the dining-room window in Gloucester Terrace on the wedding morning, had seen a very small flower-seller carefully laying two or three flower sprigs on each of the steps of their house door.

Curiosity, and pity for the poor little lean hands and thin cheeks, led Willy to run out to the child, to ask her what she was about, strewing their doorsteps.

“Poor little creature! she looked so terribly frightened,” said Eva, pityingly, as she recalled the incident.“I had run downstairs thinking the carriage had come for Sylvia and me, when I heard the door open, mid I saw her with tears of terror in her eyes try to gather up the flowers again in a terrible hurry.”

“Poor little creaturel,” echoed Mr. Bramstou. “And then she ran off, I suppose ?”

“She would have done so but for her basket, I believe. As it was, she was obliged to let us have time to speak to her again. And I never yet saw the creature, whether human being or animal, that could be afraid of Will more than a minute. We got her to put back her little flower-sprays, and then it came out why she had placed them there. The boy who had brought the rose-tree half an hour ago—that was Charles Bennett—said it was for a dear lady who had been good to him, and the boy had been so good to her she -wanted to give something to the lady he liked.”

“Poor little creature!” said George Bramston, again.

“Yes,” said Eva, with rather a tearful smile.

“But she was a happy little creature too, that day, for, with mamma’s leave, Will gave her a whole newspaperful of good things, and bought up half her flowers, ‘to decorate the breakfast-table/ he said, although it was more like a very full hothouse than anything else, already. After that, all the rest has seemed to come on naturally.”

“All the rest of her change, you mean, from a little street flower-seller into your sister’s servant?” asked Mr. Bramston.

A meditative nod was the first answer. Then she added“Yes. And no wonder she has a grateful affection for Charles Bennett. We went on buying flowers of her every week for some time after the wedding, but we did nothing else until Charlie showed his interest in her by paying a visit to her home. Poor boy! He was scarcely fourteen at the time himself, and the wretched squalor and poverty-stricken misery he found made him quite ill for days, his mother told us. The actual home of poor Milly was a dismal cupboard under the stairs. Her father was in prison, and her mother had been dead some months. Charlie gave her all his mother allowed him to keep for pocket-money for two or three months, and at last he told the whole tale to Frank and Edith.”

Mr. Bramston smiled at the satisfied sigh of relief with which those last words were spoken.

“And then,” he said naively,“of course everything wound up well, and they were all happy ever after/”

“Are you speaking about yourself and Eva?” asked a laughing voice just behind them, and Eva tried to relieve the blushes thus called up by turning quickly round, and administering a tolerably heavy thump to the newcomer.

“Wherein the world do you come from, Will?” she asked, and then she gave him two kisses—one for welcome, and one as amends for the thump.

“I have come from Oxford, sister mine. Partly by walking, partly by an excursion train, which returns to-morrow, so make the most of me while you’ve got me.”

“It seems to me that you have done that for yourself,” laughed George Bramston, looking from top to toe of the six-feet-two, well-knit frame of the young undergraduate.

And then the future brothers-in-law were introduced to each other in due form, for they had never met before, and they shook hands most cordially.

Eva’s praises had prepared each to like the other, and their own appearance greatly increased the good impression.

It said something for Edith King’s cleverness, and good managment as a housekeeper, that she showed not the slightest disturbance at the unexpected arrival of this second guest at her small vicarage. The rooms for the two gentlemen were as neatly appointed, and as ready for them within an hour of their arrival, as if it were the normal condition of things in that pretty home to have two spare bedrooms; and the well-furnished nursery tea-table, and the high tea in the dining-room, gave abundant proofs that larder and store-room were not kept stocked by an improvident or niggard hand.

Frank King’s home was such as he deserved to have that night.

It was the abode of pleasantness and peace, and we would fain linger there in the sunny light of Christian joy and unselfishness, far from the murky cloudland of sin and shame; but a few words spoken between the clergyman and his brother-in-law, Will Reece, reminds us that the true hero of our present history is one who lives in that dark region, and we must of drear necessity return to him, and follow into the depths to which he leads us.

The long-drawn-out supper-tea, in the dining-room of the Vicarage, was over, the sounds of joyous merriment from the nursery regions had sunk into quietness, and the two sisters had gone up-stairs— the young mother to fold her little ones’ hands in their evening prayer; the young aunt to give kisses and say last“good-nights.”

George Bramston had wandered out into the moonlit garden to dream happy dreams of the future, and Frank King and Will had retired to the study for a long, quiet talk.

“Don’t forget your promise of long ago, Frank,” said Will“I mean to hold you to it.”

“Very well,” was the answer.“But to what promise do you refer?’

“To one you made me nearly five years ago. At the time I first declared my wish to become a clergyman, soon after my leg got broken, you know—or, rather, got mended, I should say, for I never saw you till I was quite well again. You promised then that you would give me my title for orders. I am already beginning to look forward to my first curacy under you.”

“Thank you,” said the brother-in-law, slowly. He repeated the words, as though for want of anything else at the moment to say.“Thank you for the compliment.”

But he looked so serious, so little elated on his side at the prospect, that Will was a good deal taken aback.

“What’s the matter, Frank? Do you repent of your offer? Don’t you think that we should get on well together? Have you anyone else you-”

Mr. King stopped the questions, laying his hand on his companion’s arm.

“Your thoughts are running wide of the mark, Will. When I spoke of you one day becoming my curate, you may remember that I had a prospect of a living at the East-end of London—a district where almost any number of earnest followers of Christ might find hard work to do in His service. But in this little, quiet country parish, Will, I have no more work than I can get through myself. And even if it were not so, I should be very sorry to have your fine strength and abundant energy half wasted here. Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but I should feel like a coward if I held my tongue.”

Will smiled. His brother-in-law’s explanation had quite restored him to himself.

“I give you hearty thanks for your plain speaking, Frank, and I will speak equally plainly in return.

You gave me a promise, and in spite of what you have just said I still hold you to it, as I said before. Our Saviour went away into the wilderness for six weeks before He entered upon His ministry. I will come to you in this quiet country place to learn and think and pray, before I throw myself into the great whirl of work, where perpetual action is so stem a necessity that thought gets, perforce, thrust to the wall.”

He gazed out for a few moments silently at the starlit sky, then he added, in a lower tone—

“To tell you the truth, Frank—perhaps you will say that I am not old enough to be a particularly good judge—but to tell you the truth, I think the age at which we are allowed to enter the ministry is a good two years too young. We begin teaching others the sublime truths we have scarcely the wisdom to comprehend; we enter upon the task of trying to give comfort and strength, before we have grown fully alive to the fact that comfort and strength are needed by ourselves.”

“I agree with you there in a great measure,” said Mr. King.“But the experience we win from others, in the course of our duty, helps to teach us a good deal, Will, as we advance in our life’s path. Your eyes are open. You will learn sad lessons and solemn ones.”

Both faces were very grave. “I expect to learn some of those during this coming long vacation. I have obtained leave to visit at one of the prisons.”

“Don’t you two want any music to-night?” asked Eva’s voice in at the door. “You have never heard Mr. Bramston sing, Will, and his voice is worth hearing, I can tell you.”

“To other ears besides your own, madam, do you suppose?” questioned Will, as he jumped up from his chair and joined her.“And does he ever sing anything but ‘Come into the garden, Maud ?’”

“Yes, occasionally, Sometimes ‘Willie, we have missed you,and ‘Frankie, Hankie, Puddeny-pie.’”

“Oh, really! Then I vote we begin with ‘Frankie, Hankie.’”

And with that the whole party adjourned to the drawing-room, and we must return to London.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE SUCCESS OF BAD SCHEMES.

When we left the silkmercers’, in which John Turner was employed, that establishment had been thrown into a sudden state of commotion by the consternation depicted on the countenance of one of its best-known inmates.

“Hullo! Look out where you are going,” said one of the assistants, who was nearly run over by his companion’s headlong course. He was nearly hidden behind a pile of goods he was carrying to a customer; but as he stretched his face round to see the hurrying obstacle in his path his accent of irritation changed to one of alarm, and he exclaimed—

“Why, Turner, what’s the matter? What’s up?” John bent his head forward towards the other—

“A most daring robbery, I am afraid,” was his sharp, low answer, and then, with a face set and stern, as though with righteous indignation, he hastened on, and was soon shut in the private office with the principals.

“Of course it was my fault—all my fault,” he muttered at last, wringing his hands in his seeming deep distress.“I am greatly to blame; I should not have left him with the open trays.”

“Certainly you should not,” came the firm reply.

“Ah! I know it now—now that it is too late,” sighed John, as though with the most heartfelt repentance.

“But, sir,” and he raised his eyes heavily,“sir, you cannot think how difficult it would have been to suspect him. He did look so thoroughly the gentleman, and so honest.”

“Appearances are deceitful,” said his other hearer.

But the two partners little guessed the peculiar appropriateness of the quotation at that especial moment.

“What are the articles you find missing?” asked one of the gentlemen again, after a few moments silence.

Turner’s answer was positive enough—“A gold watch, one of our last purchases, you know, sir; a gold Albert chain, and a fine opal ring.”

“And you are quite sure that all these were safe in your cases before that customer came, who bought the lady’s ring, and with whom you left the goods exposed?”

“Oh, yes,” Turner was quite positive on that point.

“Well, this is a very serious matter,” said one of the partners at last, and as he spoke he raised his eyes, and bestowed a sharp, keen glance on the young man. The other partner did the Same, adding with slow, weighty emphasis—

“Yes, truly. Serious enough. And as you confess yourself, Mr. Turner, the blame of the loss lies at your door. Do you expect, under these circumstances, that we are the people who are to bear the brunt of it, may I ask?”

John Turner lifted his eyes to his questioner’s face, and met that searching look; but a slightly heightened colour was the only sign he gave of any extra inward disturbance. He had steeled himself, to bear almost any amount of scrutiny, and he answered the demand quietly, although with a becoming sadness and gravity of tone.

“No sir; that was the point I wished to come to. Of course it would be unjust that you should be the sufferers, and I came here not only to tell you of the loss, but also to beg you to retain my salary until you shall have reimbursed yourselves.”

“It would take a whole twelvemonths of what we pay you to do so. Are you aware of that?”

A mute bow was the only answer.

“Then, pray,” continued his questioner, raising his eyebrows,“pray, what are you to do meantime? Are you proposing to live on air, or to run into a load of debt?”

John dropped his eyelids, with an air of sorrowful humility.

“No, sir,” he murmured.“My mother and I live together. She has a trifle of her own, and she earns a trifle. It will be very hard upon her, unhappily; but she is a good mother, and she won’t let me starve. But I shall try for night-work. I shall be only too thankful to accept any employment that may lessen the burden I shall have to be upon her for a time, you may be sure. If—if you yourselves But before he could finish his purposed petition to them for extra employment, the partners rose, and one of them coming forward laid his hand kindly on his shoulder, saying, as he did so,

“Well done, Turner. You have spoken as X expected, and as an honourable man and a good son should do. And, although I am glad to have elicited such sentiments, I feel almost as though I ought to ask your pardon for having thus tried you. Go back to your post now, and be doubly careful for the future, letting this lesson teach you the dreary fact that the world is full of rogues. As for your salary, come for it as usual when it falls due. This loss is ours.”

John Turner’s face grew pale even to the lips, as his employer spoke. His knees trembled, and, whether from faintness or gratitude, he appeared about to sink on to them at his companions’ feet. But, before he could accomplish his purpose, he had been put back, firmly but kindly, on to the chair from which he had just risen, and the partners considerately left him alone in their private office to recover from the effects of his agitation.

John was thankful enough to be left alone for awhile. His plans had succeeded to the lea3t detail. He knew well the character of the men he had to deal with. He had basely slandered an innocent stranger, with a cruel indifference as to whether the day might ever come when the slander might bear bitter fruit. He had basely robbed his employers. He had still more basely traded upon their known generosity of character and trustfulness.

Although he was now the possessor of some greatly-coveted valuables, as he sat there, pale and shivering, in that quiet office, he was a very miserable man.

He had counted positively on his employers taking the loss of their property altogether upon themselves. He had been thoroughly convinced that he should receive their pardon for the supposed carelessness, and their continued confidence, and yet he had shrunk from the generous words when they were actually spoken to him, and from the friendly touch, as though his heart had been pierced with a dagger.

For one moment the glorious impulse had come to him to fling himself upon his knees before those friendly men, and confess all. But—alas for the poor, miserable fellow! between him and the holy light came the image of his mother, came the vivid picture in his mind of the contempt upon her face when she should learn that he had“thrown up the game,” with the long-desired treasures actually in his possession, and not the faintest shadow of suspicion resting upon him for the theft.

“As it is, I have the ‘good name and the ‘riches’ too,” he muttered at last, with a hard laugh. “I may as well keep them both.”

CHAPTER XXVIII
ROCKS AHEAD.

When John Turner left his employers’ private office, and went back to his post at the jewellery counter, he fondly supposed that the matter of the robbery was finally dropped.

He remembered the purchaser of Eva Reece’s new ring mentioning the fact of being in haste to catch a train, and he had improved upon the information.

“The man,” as he now called Mr. Bramston—“the man who must have stolen the goods said he must catch a train to Liverpool to meet a mail steamer— bound out for Australia, no doubt he wanted us to believe, to set us astray. Much more likely he’s hiding up in some thieves’ kitchen in London.”

“Much more likely,” both the partners had agreed, and equally likely, they further added, that already their property was unrecognisable—the gold chain melted down, the watch taken to pieces, and the opal and its setting far apart.

“Most probably,” sighed John, hypocritically.“Those light-fingered thieves are as careful and cunning as they are clever. Ninety-nine chances against one to its being the slightest use trying to recover the things, or to bring the culprits to justice.”

So fully did the silk-mercers assent to this assertion that it was little wonder John felt comfortably secure that the affair was to be suffered now to rest. But he allowed his hopes to grow into certainties too soon.

The remainder of that eventful day passed on calmly enough, and before leaving for their country homes in the evening both the partners took the trouble to assure themselves that their still-valued assistant had recovered from his painful agitation, and did their best to reassure him with kindly nods of farewell. They had made up their minds that the day’s misfortune was irreparable, and they meant to bear it bravely.

Still, of course, they were sure to talk it over, and that night one of the partners mentioned the two robberies they had lately sustained, to a friend at his own dinner-table.

“How very provoking!” was the friend’s sympathetic comment.“Depend upon it, the woman who stole the veil, and the man who has stolen these valuables to-day, are members of a gang. You’d better look out, T can tell you. You’ll be having visits from more of the fraternity before long, I shouldn’t wonder. They find your pie too full of plums to be likely to let it alone.”

“I hope they will, then,” said the owner of the pie, with an uneasy laugh.“We are doing as good a business as any of our neighbours, I freely allow; but it had needs be a more than flourishing affair that could stand a succession of such pulls upon the profits as we have had to-day.”

“Just so,” was the retort.“But„you spoke so calmly of not crying over spilt milk, and of what couldn’t be cured being endured, that I thought you were quite resigned to the prospect of repeated visitations from these clever appropriators.’ Were I in your place, I wouldn’t sit down with folded hands over the affair, I can tell you.”

“But what would you do?” asked his host, anxiously.

“Do! Why, have my premises quietly, unobtrusively, but steadily watched for a time, to be sure,” was the downright answer,“I hate cunning acts as much as anybody, but cunning folks must be served out with their own weapons. You set some sharper and more suspicious eyes than your own, or than those of that worthy partner of yours, to work for you, or else, mark my words, you’ll lose more than you bargain for.”

“We’ve done that already,” was the answer, with a half-rueful laugh.“And I don’t say that I do not think your advice may be wise, and worth acting upon.” Minute by minute the advice appeared so increasingly worth acting upon, to the silkmercer’s mind, that before he slept that night he decided to act upon it the very next day.

By the time his employer arrived at that decision John Turner was already asleep, and smiling in his sleep at a dream-picture of himself adorned with a handsome gold watch and chain, and with a splendid opal ring upon his little finger.

No dream-whisper of Mr. Mellon’s resolution came to trouble his comfortable rest. No thought crept into his deadened conscience of the little purple-leather Bible, tied up so tightly in its brown paper cover lest it should fall open now and again, and disturb the deadly peace of its owner by a display of that text inside the cover—

“A good name is more to be chosen than great riches”

CHAPTER XXI
“WHERE IS MY SILK?”

“Mother, Fm home,” called John, as he entered the sitting-room of their apartments about the same hour that Mr. Mellon was seated at dinner with a guest, discussing that day’s cleverly-managed robbery at the shop.

John wished to give a few quiet hints, after his own fashion, about the same affair to his mother, and also he wished to be soon seated at his supper. But not even the cloth for that meal was yet on the table, and his mother was not present.

“Mother!” he shouted again,“Fin home. Are you in or out?”

“Oh!” came an ejaculation from the adjoining room by way of answer, and a few seconds later Susan Turner joined her son with a garment of some sort over her arm, and a surprised look on her face.“Why, Jack, whatever has brought you home so early?”

It was his turn to look surprised.

“Mother,” he said with a laugh,“have you been having a nap? I am a good quarter of an hour later than usual, somehow, to-day. If you don’t believe me, ask the clock.”

Involuntarily Susan did so, and the clock told the same tale as her son. She was bound to credit their joint testimony.

“It’s all the fault of that abominable bit of insolence, putting a body out so,” she muttered to herself, angrily; and, flinging down the garment she had been holding on to the floor, she began to lay the table.

John picked up the discarded piece of millinery. Whatever its make might be, the material was black silk, and he had too much respect for that to leave it on the ground. Before laying it out of his hand he turned it about with a certain amount of curiosity, for his mother was not in the habit of using her work with such scant ceremony.

“Why, mother,” he exclaimed at last, in a tone of vexed wonder,“whatever has happened to this? Surely it’s the new silk jacket you showed me yesterday which you made to wear on Whit Monday.”

Mrs. Turner thumped the bread down upon the table in a way that must have broken the platter had it been of earthenware instead of wood, and then she turned round, and snatched her property out of John’s hand—or rather what was not her property.

John drew himself up, and prepared to devote his attention to the newspaper. He was not a boy any longer to be afraid of his mother when she was in a bad temper; but still it made things very uncomfortable to have her in a state of ill-humour, and he generally got angry nowadays instead of frightened.

His frowning face was the last straw to Susan’s excited feelings. A second time she flung the silk on to the carpet, and followed that act by throwing herself down on to a chair, and bursting into a perfect torrent of passionate tears.

John did become alarmed then, and grieved too. With all their sins and blindness, a great love still reigned between the parent and child.

“Mother dear/’ and John spoke in tones of tenderest affection.“Who has been bothering you, mother? If it’s any of the folks you work for, I do wish to goodness that you’d give them up. I make quite enough to keep us both now, without you slaving yourself. And I expect that it’s more plague than profit at the prices you get.”

Susan choked back her tears.“It’s—it’s—not only—the money, you see—Jack. But it pays in many—many—other little ways.”

John dropped his eyelids a moment.“Ye—es,” he muttered. Susan went on.

“There was this very jacket, you see. And I’m sure I’d full right to it, for nobody wouldn’t have got it, and yet made the dress not a penny the worse, I declare, but such a clever cutter-out as I am. And then to have all this fuss! It’s a crying shame—that’s what it is.”

“But what was the fuss, and who made it?” asked John, eyeing the half-cut-up jacket with a mystified gaze.

Susan gave herself a little shake, and sat up. It was rather a long tale to tell; but she was thankful enough to tell it to a listener who was so sure to sympathise with her own views about it.

“Mrs. Brown, she’s been one of my best customers, but not another rag will she get me to make for her from this day, I can tell herl Well, a fortnight or three weeks ago she brought me some black silk to make her a dress. A whole lot of fallals she ordered to be put about it; but seeing as she’s short and round-about, I wasn’t going to discredit my taste by making her a figure of a barrel, so I exercised my judgment a little. She chose to get in a taking, and then she said, ‘Well, if I hadn’t attended to her instructions properly, where was the rest of the folk?’”

“Oh! I see,” interjected John. He passed his hand over the spoilt jacket.“It’s a nice silk, too.”

“Of course it is, a beauty; soft as soft, with good wear in it You don’t suppose I’d have taken all this trouble for a papery one, do you! However, I said I’d used all, except some cuttings I’d pinned in the pocket Upon that she gave me a stare, and just said, ‘Indeed! We’ll see.’ That was three days ago, and I thought she’d come to her reason, and intended to put up with her dress, as I’d well made it for her, like a reasonable being, when—lo, and behold! I hadn’t but just cleared away my dinner things this afternoon when up comes my lady and some woman with her—‘My maid,’ she called her—and again orders me, like I don’t know what, to give her her silk.”

‘‘I wish she had come when I was at home, mother,” said John.

Susan sighed with the air of a cruelly-used being.“’Twouldn’t have been no good, Johnnie. That Mrs. Brown is the meanest thing that ever lived, and no lady, whatever she may think herself. What do you think she’d done?”

“I can’t think, mother.”

“No, and that you never would if you thought from now to the middle of next year. Would you ever believe! she and her maid had ripped to pieces that whole dress as I’d been to the trouble of making, so as to be able to measure off the bits. She said that she’d half a mind to do it once or twice before, but the materials hadn’t been worth the trouble. ‘And now,’ she said, as a wind-up,“now you’ll be good enough to give me the other four yards and a half of my silk that we cannot account for.”

John laid his hand on the mantle again.“But you couldn’t, mother!”

“No, of course not; not rightly, I couldn’t. But she went on at last in such an outrageous manner about having a lawyer to look into the matter, and a warrant to search the place, and publishing the matter where you were employed-”

John started away from his mother frith crimsoned cheeks.

“Ah, that must never be! Anything, mother, sooner than that. It would be ruin—especially just now. You must do anything to stop that.”

“Your mother isn’t a fool,” was the sulky answer.“Of course I saw that must be prevented, so at last I said that—well, if Mrs. Brown was quite sure about the quantity she ought to have, then a girl I’d had working with me must have stolen it, and I’d make her give it up by to-morrow.’’

“And so you’ve got to cut your jacket up?”

“Yes. It’s a good thing I hadn’t made the sleeves.”

“And a still better thing that your son has money enough in his pocket to treat his mother to a new bonnet at any rate for the holiday, if she has been done out of her jacket.”

And young Turner kissed his mother, and his mother kissed him, and then the^ went to supper as contentedly as though they were two good people doing their best to be&r other folks’ injustice patiently. Neither of them found place in their hearts for even a shadow of sympathy with Mrs. Brown for all the vexation, trouble, and expense she had been put to by the dishonesty of her dressmaker, Susan Turner.

According to Susan Turner and her son, Mrs. Brown was“a mean old thing, and no lady,” because she insisted on being dealt with honestly, and would not always submit quietly to being robbed of materials she had honestly paid for.

CHAPTER XXX
MR. MELLON ACTS UPON ADVICE.

The day after the watch robbery John got to his post at the silkmercers’ to the minute of the right time. Punctuality was one of his virtues, and, to give him his due, it must be said that, whatever else he robbed them of, he never defrauded his employers of any portion of the hours they paid him for.

“Hullo, Turner! the early bird, as usual,” said one of his companions, arriving when John was already standing quietly at his counter.

Another of the young men came up the shop at the same moment.

“Aye,” he said, half seriously.“And also, as usual, looking as cool as a cucumber. After such an affair as that of yesterday, if it had happened to any of the others of us, I warrant you we should have had something said as would have made us look down in the mouth for a week.”

“Ah! to be sure,” asserted the first speaker.“But then, you see, some may steal a horse, while others mayn’t-”

And there, in the middle of the proverb, the young man broke off short, with a startled exclamation. Turner had sprung towards him with a low cry, and a face pale as death.

His two companions stared at him, and stared at each other.

“In the name of goodness, what’s the matter with you, Turner? Did you catch sight of a ghost ?”

“Not exactly,” he replied, with a sickly smile, as he slowly recovered himself.

But he had seen a ghost—the ghost of a panic terror. To his self-consciousness the proverb seemed for a moment to convey a hint that his guilt was known, in an unexpected quarter.

However, he almost instantly became reassured, and could have beaten his own head against a stone wall, whilst he muttered some lie about ‘‘horrible spasm of the heart,” to account for his extraordinary agitation.

“You see!” he went on, after a minute.“I didn’t get off quite so scot-free from anxiety, you see, Grant, as you imagined. One doesn’t stand in fear of being dismissed with a character for gross carelessness, or of at least being beggared for a year, without a certain amount of suffering.”

“No—so it seems,.” said Grant, coldly

He was not gifted, like his employers, with a large-hearted trust in his fellow-creatures. He went off to his own special department now, with abundant food for thought in his mind, and a determination to“keep a watch on the prime favourite.”

John came to a private determination to“get rid of that fellow, Grant,” if, by hook or by crook, he could manage to do so.

Business was slack that morning, so both the fellow-assistants had plenty of leisure to indulge their charitable musings—the one actuated by envy, the other by his haunting fears.

Once or twice during the course of that morning John would have been thankful to see the opal ring, the watch, and chain, back in their places in the case, and to find that their abstraction was a dream. But it was only apprehension—apprehension with not one tinge of penitence—that actuated these feelings.

About eleven o’clock in the forenoon Mr. Mellon, the senior partner, came into his shop arm-in-arm with a gentleman—an intimate friend, to judge from the close and animated conversation the two were holding together as they walked slowly up between the long rows of counters, apparently taking very little notice of where they were, in their interest in each other.

They branched off, however, at the lace department, and Mr. Mellon called to the salesman there:—

“Fenwick, this gentleman wishes to buy a little lace necktie for his wife. He is pressed for time, so let him be served quickly.”

If the gentleman were so pressed for time, it was rather odd that he should spend so many minutes chatting to Fenwick first, and then to the young man who waited on him. But he chose his tie at last, and as he walked away with it in his pocket, and Mr. Mellon close by his side again, he muttered the singular remark in that gentleman’s ear:—

“Nothing there. They are all right.”

They turned back into the main thoroughfare of the shop again, moving along slowly, and with an air of preoccupation as before, and so they got just within sight of the jewellery counter, where Mr. Mellon made a slight pause in a sentence. His companion raised his eyes, not to the speaker’s face, but looking straight before him at the bright display.

The next instant the stranger suddenly stood still, or rather stopped the further progress up the shop, and jerked himself and his companion suddenly round, with their backs to that especial store of valuables. At the same time he exclaimed,

“But dear me, Mr. Mellon, here I am chatting with you when I ought to be the other side of London, or something of the sort, half a minute or so hence. Good-day to you. See you again soon, I hope.”

“Nay, then,” said Mr. Mellon, clasping the arm still tighter which the other was drawing away,“I will at least walk back with you to the door.”

“What is it?” he murmured, a minute later.“Why are you suddenly in such a hurry to be gone? ”

“Because,” muttered back the other, in the same cautious tone,“I have made a discovery.”

CHAPTER XXXI
MR. DRUMMOND WON’T BELIEVE IT.

“I HAVE made a discovery.”

That is a rather exciting sentence when it falls upon any one’s ears. The discoverer is generally a good deal excited himself; and partly sympathy with his emotion, and partly curiosity, excites everybody else. But when the words were uttered in that low, cautious whisper in the silkmercer’s shop, Mr. Mellon’s excitement was of a very personal character. He could scarcely restrain himself from calling out aloud, as he repeated in startled tones—

“Made a discovery? Where—what?”

“A discovery yonder—at your watch counter itself,” murmured back the other,“and I wish to get away before I am seen: otherwise I may be able to do you no service, after all.”

And he had indeed made a very important discovery, for Mr. Mellon’s companion that morning, in the tour of the shop, was the detective once upon a time employed by Mr. Chesman, and he had seen John Turner standing guard over the jewellery counter.

Better join some one else with him in his charge, instantly,” ejaculated Mr. Mellon anxiously, after five minutes further converse with the detective outside the shop-doors.

“Better do nothing of the sort, begging your pardon, sir, for saying so,” was the reply.

“But our property there is so valuable,” was the almost piteous rejoinder,“and it cannot be safe under his hands for a moment.”

A smile of superior wisdom rested on the detective’s face for a few moments.

“Begging your pardon again, sir, the things in those cases yonder were never so safe as they are at the present hour. Clever fellows, like that yonder, don’t repeat their acts of that large sort too soon. They give you time in between to settle down again —forget a bit, you know. And as for a diamond so much as the size of a pin’s head getting stolen from beneath John Turner’s care—well, it would take a fox and a half to manage that, and then he needn’t make too sure he’d get the deed quite done. No, no, sir. I’ve had my eye on young Turner for many a long day, partly from professional interest, to see what he’d come to at last, with such upbringing, and partly from old liking for his steady-going father, who’d have trained him up so differently if he’d lived.”

Mr. Mellon fixed his eyes somewhat indignantly upon the man.“But then, if you knew so much about the rascal, how could you let him get taken on in such a place as this without giving us a word of warning? Really—really-” and indignation got the better of courtesy for the minute.“Really, I must say it’s disgraceful.”

But the detective did not lose his temper. He never did; he only smiled again in a rather irritating way, and said, calmly,“It’s none of our business to go about giving warnings of that sort, sir; luckily for us. Besides, even if it were, I could have given you none, for I had lost sight of the Turners the past two years and more. I was sent to America on business, and was there a good while. John Turner must have come here while I was away.”

“Humph!” muttered the silkmercer;“and do you mean that you ever actually found out anything against him after the affair at the butterman’s?”“Yes, to be sure, lots of things. But only privately, on my own account, you know. I’ve never been called in, nor any one else either, to sift affairs since then, until now; so, of course, I’ve only had to hold my tongue. But I did manage to undo one bad bit of work he did. There’s an honest young fellow now in the police force, keeping his old mother comfortably too, who got turned out into the streets for our friend Jack Turner’s misdeeds.”

“Friend!” ejaculated Mr. Mellon,“don’t desecrate the word by using it with reference to such a miscreant! I shall be thankful to see the last of him.’“Not I, sir,” answered the detective.“I don’t want to see that last till he’s turned over a new leaf. His father was as good a fellow as ever stepped. He pulled me out of a pit once.”

“Did he?” said Mr. Mellon, abstractedly, as he re-entered his establishment without waiting to hear the answer. But if he had waited, it would have been all the same. He would have obtained no answer to that query, for the pit referred to was a metaphorical, and not a real one, and the man who had been pulled out of it had no intention to tell the tale to any stranger’s ears.

“Some day or other I may tell it to Jim Turner’s son,” the detective murmured to himself as he walked away.“Aye, some day to him, if it. seems anyways likely to give me any hold oyer him for good; but it’s no concern of anybody else’s, that I can see.”

Mr. Mellon and his partner were soon closeted together, engaged in one of the most earnest discussions they had ever held since they entered into partnership. It was a very painful one, as well as serious. Mr. Mellon and Mr. Drummond had both become inspired with a sincere attachment for the assistant of whom they were now called upon to believe so black a tale.

Mr. Drummond sat with his elbow on the table, and his face half hidden with his hand.

“It is no good,” he burst out at last,“I cannot believe it, and will not. There is some plot afoot to ruin the poor fellow, I feel convinced, just because of our evident friendship towards him.”

“But, Drummond, you forget,” gravely remonstrated the senior.

“I forget nothing,” was the hasty rejoinder.

“Nay; you forget that the detective says he has been guilty of dishonest acts in other places from his boyhood upwards.”

“I don’t believe it. The man has been put up to say so. Turner’s companions are spitefully jealous of him, because of his superior abilities and our goodwill. Do you suppose that a common thief would have come so instantaneously to tell us of the losses, and have offered so readily to make them good out of his own pocket? It’s absurd—it’s impossible!”

Mr. Mellon clasped his hands firmly on the table before him.

“Drummond, his very doing so increased our confidence in him, and prevented our accepting an offer that seemed so frankly, humbly honest. It was very clever of him.”

Mr. Drummond sprang to his feet impetuously, and turned upon his friend—

“I’ll tell you what it is, Mellon, this perpetual grind at money-getting is ruining you, like everybody else. You’ll be suspecting me of picking your pocket next. I’d trust that fellow Turner as soon as myself.”

Mr. Mellon sighed, and rose and left the office. To his kind nature that day’s loss, the loss of trust, was already greater far than yesterday’s loss, and he did not wish to have a quarrel with his friend added to the other discomforts oppressing him. He had scarcely left the room when there was a tap at the door.

“Come in,” called Mr. Drummond in a tone of voice that made the words sound much more like an order to keep out But the applicant for admission obeyed the letter and not the spirit.

“Well, Grant, do you want anything?” asked the silkmercer, as his assistant entered, and glanced round with a somewhat disappointed air at finding only one of the gentlemen present.“If you wish to speak to Mr. Mellon/’ he added after a moment,“you will find him in the shop.”

“Oh, then,” began Grant, and then he stopped, and looked at his employer as though for courage to continue. But the gentleman was gazing intently at a pen between his fingers, and scowling. Not at all a promising-looking individual just then to talk to confidentially. But as Grant had brought himself into the scrape, he must get out of it again somehow or other. He started his speech afresh.

“I only thought it right, sir, to come to—to say— but as Mr. Mellon is in the shop now himself, well— of course he’s got his eyes about him, and so—perhaps-”

All this time Mr. Drummond had sat staring at that pen as if it were the most interesting object in the world, and deserving of his whole attention. But now, at last, when his companion came wholly to a standstill in his stammering speech, he did raise his eyes slightly with the one cold monosyllable—

“Well?”

Grant coughed and cleared his throat, and heartily wished himself out of that apartment.

“Oh! only, sir, of course Turner is high in favour, and clever, and—and—all that—only more than I have noticed things that don’t seem quite so clear to understand as they might be.”

Mr. Drummond laid down the pen now, and got up, and stood coldly facing his assistant.

“Grant, if you have a charge to make against Mr.

Turner, I will send for him, and you shall make it to his face, when he will have a chance to defend himself. But if you do not care to do this, you had better return to your duties. I set myself against all backbiters and slanderers. Now you may go.” And Mr. Grant went, much discomfited. But as far as Mr. Drummond was concerned, his generous unwillingness to believe evil had to give way before the clear evidence of fact.

CHAPTER XXXII
HIS FATHER’S BIBLE.

It was a bright, delicious day in, the last week in May—Monday in Whitsun-week. All London seemed to be thronging the highways and byways leading into the regions of fresh air, and trees unblacked with the great city’s smoke. Crowds of happy-faced, gaily-dressed people were enjoying the summer holiday at Hampton Court.

Amongst the best-dressed and the most self-satisfied were Susan Turner and her son. Susan Turner had on a new black net bonnet, the gift of John, adorned with just one yellow rose and bud at the side. She had retrimmed her last year’s jacket with some silk cord“saved over” from one customer’s trimmings, some lace from another, and even her sage-green satteen dress was bound, with a braid she had never paid for. And yet she could smile and laugh, and talk away to John as if she had a right to feel her heart within her as light as that of the most tender, innocent little child dancing in its mother’s arms.

John was very well dressed; but that he had a right to be, and his present position rendered some care as to his attire necessary. He was a little oversmart, perhaps; but he was young, and his mother liked to see him so. Hot the strictest censor would blame him much for being a trifle over-fine when he was out for a holiday with his mother.

But as he carried the lavender kid glove of his right hand in his left, there was visible a sheen and shimmer from a stone on his little finger which should have burnt away the smiles from his face, and dimmed the light of his eyes, whenever they caught sight of it.

The splendid stone seemed to have a great attraction for some one else in the Hampton Court grounds. When he first caught sight of it he started slightly, and then smiled with an air of satisfaction. He had guessed that it would be worn on that Bank holiday, and he had easily contrived to follow its wearer in the right direction out of town. A little waiting about and watching, and a little patience had been all that was needful, and neither John nor his mothei had the slightest idea that there were rocks ahead.

“John dear,” said Susan Turner,“I begin to feel very peckish with being in the air so long. Do you know the time?”

John laughed.“Why, mother, it’s quite early yet. Not near dinner-time, I’m sure. Let’s go into the Palace, and look at the pictures a bit, before we attack the provisions. Shan’t we? ”

At that moment, before Susan could answer, a stranger accosted them civilly with the request that the gentleman would kindly tell him if it had yet struck twelve.

John drew out a watch from his pocket in reply.

“Just on the stroke,” he said; but he little dreamt that time was just on the final stroke of his false happiness. He was about to put the watch back into his pocket when the stranger remarked, in a complimentary tone,

“Ah! what a remarkably good face your watch has. The figures so clear. That’s what I like.”

And he bent forward, looking a bit closely as he spoke. Susan stooped her face to examine it also, while John held it up to them with a smile of well-satisfied pride. He knew better than many people that it was a watch no one need be ashamed to wear —if come by honestly.

For a moment the sunshine on the Turners’ faces matched the sunlight brightening the day, but that moment passed, and the sunshine was gone.

“Ye—es,” said the stranger slowly.“It is a splendid watch. They told me so. You were no fool, John Turner, when you made your choice.”

As he uttered these words, low, stifled cries burst involuntarily from his companions. John made a mechanical movement with his hand, as if he would fling the chronometer away, and his mother made a frantic clutch at him, as though in guardianship. The stranger caught up the watch, as it hung from the chain, and quietly detached it.

“Pity to let it get damaged,” he said.“They want it back again, you see. Mind you don’t drop the ring.”

Then, in still lower tones, he added;—“And now, John Turner, for the sake of the friendship I once bore your father, I want to spare you shame as much as possible; so if you come along with me quietly, and make no attempt to escape, not a creature about here need know anything but what I am an acquaintance of yours. Come, now.”

But John seemed incapable of coming. His countenance looked white and dazed. A bitter moan broke from between his pallid lips—“Mother!”

The detective answered.“Yes, yes, you will have your mother with you. She’s bound to come along, unfortunately, for I have a charge against her too, as the receiver of stolen goods—that lace tie you are wearing, Mrs. Turner, which you knew he had stolen from Mellon & Drummond’s place. But come on: people are beginning to stare at us. Don’t make a fuss, or dawdle any longer, or all my care to spare you will be no use.”

00

And it was no use. The well-intentioned recommendations to avoid public exposure among those throngs of holiday - makers were lost upon his prisoners. The shock had come upon Susan with such awful suddenness that her usual bold spirit and presence of mind utterly failed her, and, falling into violent hysterics, she quickly proclaimed the sins and disgrace of herself and her son to hundreds of inquisitive listeners. She had at length to be carried away, kicking, struggling, shrieking, through the crowd, by policemen, and borne off by main force to prison.

As for John, he went quietly enough. For his part, the blow seemed to have paralysed him for the time. Every now and then his lips opened with the one word—“Mother;” but no speech of any other kind could be got from him. Indeed he appeared quite incapable of thought.

Susan Turner only lay one night in prison. The lace tie found upon her might belong to the establishment where her son worked, she said. For her part, she knew nothing about that, nor cared either. A pedlar woman had brought it to her, and she had paid her a good price for it.

The silkmercers were convinced that the statement was false; but at the same time they mercifully refused to bring any charge against her, and she was released—that is to say, released from jail; from her own burden of dark thought she had a secret consciousness that henceforth there could be no release on earth, and beyond earth all was darkness.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.”

A quiet conscience may be as easy in a prison as in a peaceful country cottage, and an unquiet one has peace nowhere.

Susan Turner was let out of prison, and she crept home by all the dingiest and narrowest streets she could find, and casting so many stealthy glances around her, as she went, that many another miserable comrade in guilt learnt her secret as plainly as if she had proclaimed it aloud with her tongue as she walked along.

She reached her home at last, and sat there, free once more. Sat there, locked in alone, through the long, black hours of that night, and of many another night to come, and the same words sounded on, and on, and on in her ears till they seemed as though they would drive out reason.

“Mother, do you remember that evening when you beat me for telling old Mrs. Barker how you let me steal the apple out of the greengrocer’s basket? And do you remember how you stopped at last, and then kissed me when I said I would be good if you’d leave off? Good to steal and lie, and hide the lies and the thefts! Do you remember? This thing that has grown out of that is bad enough!”

So John Turner had spoken that bright Whitsuntide holiday when there was so little whiteness about the souls of himself and his mother.

So he had spoken as they were taken from pleasure to prison, rousing up to ask the bitter, heart-wrung questions, and then he fell back into his deep, dreamlike lethargy.

But although his lips were still, some thought was going on behind those fixed, staring eyes. Once more the wretched convicted thief wondered how it would have been with him, had his father lived to train him up according to the teachings of the Bible he so greatly loved.

Susan’s mind was filled with the same wonder as she sat day by day at her lonely breakfast, at her lonely supper, as she dragged out the long hours of the Saturday half-holidays alone, and the hopeless Sundays. There was no one to join her now in thoughtless pleasure-trips on the Lord’s-day of peace and rest, and she cared nothing for church, nothing’ for reading, nothing for prayer. Once, indeed, she did pray, and from her heart too, but with no faith in getting any answer to the short, bitter cry—

“Oh, my God! for something, anything, even death, to drown the sound of those words, those cruel, barbarous words!”

When poor John spoke them he had not meant to be cruel or barbarous. They had been forced from him by the tumultuous misery in his brain, and he had no thought of their dwelling upon his mother’s mind with such torturing persistency. Indeed it is more than doubtful whether he remembered that he had uttered them aloud, and when he saw her haggard face he little imagined that his reproach was in part accountable.

“Mother,” he said one day,tenderly,“don’t come any more, mother dear. These visits try you too much.” The tears started to her eyes, and her lips trembled.“Oh t John, don’t you care to see me? Oh! my boy, don’t say that—my heart will break—don’t say that.”

John’s own eyes grew dim.

“I couldn’t say that, mother, seeing that you are the only creature in the whole wide world I care for. I only asked you not to come because it—it—seems to hurt you so to see my—shame.”

“You would never have come to shame but for your mother,” came the low reply.“It is fitting that your mother should share it. 0 laddie!” with a low wail of inexpressible misery,“don’t you know that your mother would take it all from you upon her own shoulders, if they would let her?” ! Yes, the son did know that, and he was equally thankful that the brunt of the terrible blow fell upon him.

One mercy was left to them, one spark of grace they kept—their mutual, unselfish love. John had, besides, his love for his father’s memory.

“Mother,” he muttered shamefacedly, one day, just as the visiting hour was drawing to a close, and she had risen to take leave;“would you mind, mother, next time you come, bringing me father’s little Bible? You’ll find it in my right-hand drawer, tied up in a brown paper with a purple ribbon.”

“I’ll find it,” said the mother eagerly, thankful to have even a little thing like that to do for him.“Good-bye, Johnnie dear.”

The child’s name came back to her lips unconsciously in these days of sorrow, and from the man’s mouth there came no words of remonstrance against the tender epithet. He bent to receive her kiss.

“Good-bye, mother dear. Keep up your heart, for my sake. I shall be glad to have the Book. It will be company of some sort, you see, since I cannot always have you. And it’s full of father’s own handwriting from beginning to end, I believe.”

The mother, Susan Turner, had sown one seed, and reaped the bitter harvest. The young father, Alec Turner, had also sown, with many prayers. Who should say that in the heavenly Father’s good time that seed should not also bear its fruit, the precious fruit of repentance, faith, and holiness?

John had not long to wait for the precious little purple-leather Book. His mother got it ofit of the corner, in which it had been so long hidden away, that same evening, and the next morning she walked off with it to the prison. It was not one of the visiting days; but although she knew that she herself could not get within those stern, strong walls, she felt tolerably confident that her small parcel would gain admittance.

“Better bring it over and give it, yourself, next Saturday, if it’s a book as they’ll let him have,” said the warder, good-naturedly.“He’ll be sure to value it more from your own hands;—they always do.” Susan Turner looked up at the man entreatingly—“Ah t do get it to him, if you can. I’d be so thankful to have him know as I’ve taken the care to bring it to him at once. And as for valuing it, he’s always done that, poor lad. It’s his dead father’s own Bible.” The man started slightly, and stared, at that very unexpected information.“Well, missis,” he said slowly;—“you do beat me now, I’m free to confess. Set such store by his father’s Bible, and yet to get himself inside these here gates, do seem to me to be working by the rule of contraries.”

Susan’s face flushed; but she did not tell the man that it was the closed volume only that her son had prized, and not its contents. She only repeated her request that he might have it, urging further:

“I don’t believe the governor himself, or any of them, will want you to stand out against letting a Bible in.”

“No, and I didn’t say as they would,” began the warder, when a gentleman came forward kindly, and said:

“ If you will trust it to my charge I will give it to the chaplain. He will see it delivered safely to the hands of the right owner, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reece,” said the prison guardian, passing the book over to him.“Will you please to say it’s for Number 20. It’s all right for you now, missus.”

But Susan had fled.

CHAPTER XXXIII
SUSAN GOES TO PADDINGTON.

“Mother, he was so good to me those days.”

“And he never found out who you were?”

“Never. How should he? You see I was always number twenty in prison, and there was nothing to tell my name, or anything about my former life, unless I chose to do so myself. He wasn’t one of the prying kind.”

Mrs. Turner and her son were sitting together in a dreary little room in a narrow street in Somers Town. There was none of the brightness, none of the prettiness of Susan’s former homes about this present one. Her pride was dead, and with it, as it seemed, even those good qualities which had formerly done something to adorn her character.

Her face was wan and heavy-eyed, and her home most cheerless in its aspect of neglected meagreness.

When John came out of prison, a fortnight ago, she had made some attempt at decking the place for him, and at furnishing forth the tea-table. But the pretence of feasting and rejoicing was too great a trial for the strength of either of them that night, and thenceforth Susan dropped back into the listless attendance to her daily duties, which had grown upon her during the time of her loneliness. Besides, money was scant now with them, as it had never been before.

Mrs. Turner had lost all her old customers, and had not the courage to try for new ones; and John, still under police supervision, had a trembling fear of repulse whenever he ventured out to seek employment, which had hitherto brought him back each day without any effort made to obtain it.

On the evening with which we are now concerned he had thus come in, chilled with heart-sickness as much as with the north-east wind. He looked ill and wretched. His mother felt faint with fear for him as her eyes rested on his face.

“Beally, John,” she said a little sharply,“you should take some care of yourself. How could you stay out in this bitter wind for no purpose?”

“For no purpose,” echoed John, with a sigh.“You are right there, mother. My pluck failed me, as usual, when I got to the door of that place advertised. But this must not go on. I cannot let you keep me much longer on your bit of money. You are as thin as you can be, not to be altogether a shadow, as it is.”

“Then it’s a case of the pot and the kettle,” said Mrs. Turner, with a weary laugh.“For I can nigh see through you, I think. Do come to the table, and at least see if a hot cup of tea won’t put an atom of colour into your cheeks; and don’t bother so much about getting work. We shall do yet awhile without starving if you don’t, so you may as well be easy.” But John could not be easy.

He sat drinking his tea with a very thoughtful aspect. Once or twice his mother caught his eyes resting upon her face, and at last she could bear it no longer.

“Speak out, Jack, do,” she said.“Of course I can see you’ve got something on your mind, and I’d rather by half hear the worst at once than sit guessing at it this fashion. It’s downright torture.”

“I’m so sorry,” exclaimed John, penitently.“And, besides, I haven’t any bad news to tell you. Please God,” and he murmured the words reverently—“please God, we have had enough of that for one while. But I was wondering, mother, whether you could any way get up heart to go to Mrs. Reece.”

“Oh, Jack,” interrupted Susan, with hands suddenly clasped over her face;“anything but that, Jack. It would be too—too dreadful to telL”

A choking sob stifled the rest of her speech, and John said, soothingly:—

“Yes, yes, mother, of course, I know. I am sorry I mentioned it.”

However, when Susan had put by the tea-things, and sat mending his socks, she returned to the subject herself. To tell the truth, her son’s words had not been the first reminder she had had of late, of her former kind and ever-sympathising mistress. Her own thoughts had repeatedly brought to her mind the words spoken to her in Trinity Church, more than seven years ago—

“If ever you or John need a friend, be sure you come to me.”

They had needed a friend sorely enough for some time past, and so they did still; but though Susan’s pride was dead, humility had not yet sprung from its ashes. Despair and dogged endurance were all she had attained to until John came back to her, haggard and with the prison taint upon him, but with a something new, in face and manner, of patience and gentleness, which began to exercise an unconscious influence over her, and at any time she would have done much for him.

But to go to her old mistress, and confess what had come of the neglected warnings—to go to her, and confess what the petty pilferings, the mean, paltry pickings and stealings had led to—to confess what a dismal wreck she had made of the lives of herself and her son, to the one who had foreseen all, and implored her to shun the horrible rocks that grind away honour, self-respect, conscience, and at last engulf the soul!—to do this seemed impossible. Whenever Susan Turner had thought of the matter she had turned from it with the faintness of failing strength. And now her son asked her to make the sacrifice, and she sat darning his socks, and thinking, and taking as many furtive glances at his sunken cheeks as awhile ago he had taken at hers.

“John,” she said at last, rather suddenly,“did Mr. Willy Reece see you many times last year, after he took your father’s Bible to you that day? I daresay you told me, but I forget.”

“I told you once or twice, mother, when he’d been,” was the quiet answer.“But it seemed to trouble you, hearing the name, so I gave over talking of his visits. He came very often so long as that summer college vacation lasted, and he promised to come again in the winter, but he could not keep that promise. He fell ill of fever, the chaplain said. I told you about that?”

“Yes,” assented Susan, with her face bent over her work,“I remember. I suppose, John—I suppose he—took good care to let you feel the mighty difference between a saint like him and a sinner like you?”

For a few moments there was no answer; then John said slowly,“Mother, Mr. Reece taught me to love Christ; he made me a Christian. Pharisees don’t do that God led him, and father together, to let in the light into my heart Oh, mother, he was so good to me those days.”

“And he never found out who you were?” u Never. He wasn’t one of the prying kind.” After this, little more was said before the mother and son bid each other good-night. The next day the weather was very bad, and when John returned home to the early dinner after another fruitless walk, he yielded to his mother’s entreaties that he would stay at home that afternoon.

“ Indeed,” she said,“I really wish you would, for the needle-woman opposite has promised, if she should get the extra work she is expecting, to give me some of it to do; and seeing she may come over about it any minute, and I want to be out an hour or two between this and teatime, I should be glad to have you in to take it for me, if it’s brought.”

Mrs. Turner had run on with this awkward speech in a great hurry, as if afraid, for some reason or other, of being interrupted, and when it was accomplished she left the room hastily, as though afraid of having any more words on the subject. Some years ago she had come to a decision, one morning, to go up to the neighbourhood of her old home at Paddington, and then she was very anxious to hide her intention from her son, because she knew it would anger him. Now she had come to the same decision, and she was equally anxious that her son should not guess her purpose, lest courage should fail her at the last moment, and she should turn back midway.

When she had her jacket and bonnet on she did not even go back to the other room to say good-bye, but went down the stairs and out of the house without a moment’s pause. She had been thinking all night, and she had an instinctive feeling that the less she allowed herself to think now, the better, until she had seen and spoken to Mrs. Reece. Speculating upon how she would be received at the well-known house in Gloucester Terrace only made her reluctance to go there greater; and yet, for her poor, fading son’s sake, she could keep away no longer.

But alas for poor Susan! She had put off the visit too long. The dining-room shutters were shut, the drawing-room windows were papered up. The family had gone for an Italian tour for the winter months.

Susan hardly knew, herself, how much of comfort and help she had begun to hope for from the expected interview, until she found that it was unattainable. As she turned away from the door her heart sank within her, and she clung to the rail for support as she descended the steps.

“What to do now?she muttered, with quivering lips.“What to do now?”

Truly, at that moment, it seemed to her there was nothing to do but to lie down and die. Her little pension from the railway company had always been a comfortable addition to earnings, but it was nothing like enough for the sole maintenance of two grown people. And, yet, how to add to it? She had earned a character for dishonesty, and although John had a good character now, that was worse than none, for it was a character from a prison.

As she crept along with the slow and heavy steps of one oppressed with shame and grief, she mistook her way, and passed out of the main road without, heeding where she went Then, after a few moments, she became dimly aware that she must have made a mistake. She paused in her walk, then stopped altogether, and stood looking about her in a half-bewildered state for some remembered landmark.

Suddenly her eyes rested on a newly-painted shop just opposite. She seemed fascinated by the two black-lettered names. She read and re-read them, and then, with an audible moan, lifted her two hands and pressed them tightly over her heart.

“Poor thing! You are changed. You do look ill,” said a voice in low, shocked tones beside her, and Susan dropped her hands, and turned her dimmed eyes upon her companion.

A momentary flash of her old pride and anger sent the crimson colour into her cheeks, as she looked at the other woman.

“Ah!” she said sharply,“I might have known, Mrs. Bennett, that I shouldn’t he able to come anigh this neighbourhood without having you to act the spy upon me.”

“Indeed, then,” began Mrs. Bennett, with unusual gentleness; but Susan would not suffer her to continue. She broke in again passionately, the agitation of grief turning to the excitement of anger.

“Indeed, then, and indeed then, yes. Of course it’s pleasant to you to see me standing here, a downtrodden beggar, and opposite that shop that you’ve got your boy’s name painted up so fine upon. ‘Chesman & Bennett,’ indeed! If I’d chose to let my John stay here, when old Chesman himself begged hard to keep him, it might have been ‘Chesman & Turner,’ instead of ‘Chesman & Bennett ’ now, and so I can tell you that.”

Mrs. Bennett let the poor boast pass. She knew very well what it was worth. Her memory for past events was good, but she had been learning a new lesson lately—“Love one another.” She was not at all perfect in it yet, for she found, as she sometimes said despondently, that it took a deal of learning. But she did not find it very difficult to be patient and forbearing to that poor, worn, wan-eyed woman now beside her. It seemed only yesterday, as it were, that she had seen Susan Turner doing her shopping about that neighbourhood, looking so pretty and self-satisfied, gay and fresh and bright. And now the contrast was too pitiful. She could not keep back her tears.

“That is not my boy’s name over Chesman’s shop, Mrs. Turner. It’s that of my nephew, Charles Bennett; little Charlie we used to call him, though he’s a fine enough grown young fellow now. But I don’t think as you ever knew him. He’s been the making of all of us.”

“So well off as all that, is he?” said Susan, unable to resist the comfort of a chat even with an old neighbour whom she had so disliked.“He must be full young yet to have made much money.”

“Yes, but he does work very hard, and he makes something by his plants. But I don’t mean as he’s helped us in that way. You know your Miss Edith Reece, that was, took him in hand—her and Mr. King together; and the good he does, and the hold he gets over folks you wouldn’t believe. I know this, my Jim is twice the son he used to be, thanks to Charlie. And if it had been only to pleasure my boy, I’d ha’ given up picking holes in my neighbours’ coats. But the fact is, I’ve so many in my own nowadays, that my eyes have enough to do to look at home. And the word ‘home’ reminds me they’re all out, so you must just let me take you in to have a cup of tea.”

Had Susan Turner been told before she left Somers Town that within a couple of hours she would be Mrs. Bennett’s guest, she would certainly have remained at home, to prove the prophecy as false as it was unwelcome. But Mrs. Bennett was changed and Susan was changed also, far more than she was aware of.

Tea, and an egg and buttered toast, and a bright little fire, did something to restore the poor thing’s failing strength; a long talk over her troubles did still more. This was the very first time that she had spoken of them to any one, and once the doors of her heart were opened, words and tears poured forth together in streams that almost seemed as if they would never cease.

The listener’s tears flowed in sympathy, and an occasional ejaculation of“Poor thing, poor thing!” or“Dear, dear, it’s too sad,” showed that the attention was held chained to that most pitiful history.

“And now—and now,” sobbed Susan Turner at length, drawing to an end,“now that he has come back to me, it seems as if he’d only come back to die, for the—the—place he’s been in-”

“Yes, dear,” said the other woman gently;“I know. Never mind thinking any more about that. Is not John looking quite well?”

The tears and moans broke out afresh at that question.“He’s nought but skin and bone. Fretting has done it. And now each day he’s getting worse with worrying, because he can get no work; and —and no more can’t I.”

At that moment there was a tap at the door, and unthinkingly Mrs. Bennett called out instantly,“Come in.”

As quickly the permission was accepted. The handle was turned, and before Susan could twist her chair round so as to hide her face from view, the new-comer had entered the small apartment. Mrs. Bennett started to her feet with eager welcome.

“Oh, Mr. Reece, sir, who’d have ever expected to see you to-day?”

“ Are you sorry to do so?” was the laughing reply.

“Ah, sir,” came the answer in a tone that spoke volumes. Then she added,“but we were told, sir, as the family had all gone to foreign parts for the winter.”

Will Reece smiled. “So the home party has, Mrs. Bennett. But since my ordination last spring I belong to Mr. King’s country parish, you know. I am only up in town for two days, and I went to Gloucester Terrace just now for letters, getting news of a caller there at the same time, whom I much wished to see. That brought me off here to learn if you could give me information as to her address, and instead I am fortunate enough to find herself.”

And with those words the young clergyman went up to poor broken-hearted Susan, and took her hand in a firm, close clasp.

While these events were taking place with Mrs. Turner, the parcel of coarse shirts to make, which she had been hoping for, had been received by John, and then, finding his mother did not return, he wandered out into the darkening streets once more for relief from sad reflections.

CHAPTER XXXIV
AT CHESMAN’S ONCE MORE.

‘What’s up?”

“Fire—awful one, and spreading.”

And the man scarcely waited to give his hasty answer before he rushed on again, the pain of the sore feet, and the weakness of the half-starved body alike forgotten or overcome in the eagerness to win a shilling for“first news,” at one of the fire-brigade offices.

The man who had put the question was certainly neater than the poor tatterdemalion fellow to whom he had addressed it. But if any one in that running, hurrying crowd had thought to notice either of them, the verdict as to supreme wretchedness would not have been given to the proclaimed beggar.

The barefoot courier shambled along rapidly, his whole body animated with excitement, and his face brightened with temporary hope.

The questioner gazed after him for some moments, with the listlessness of the deep-sunken eyes scarcely affected even by that intelligence. Haggard and bitterly weary his face looked. His whole attitude, as he stood there leaning against the lamp-post, expressed heart-sickness and hopelessness.

But there was an added stir amongst the running, chattering, shouting mobs about him. A distant rumbling sound advancing—screams, shouts, calls, the trampling of horses’ feet tearing along, a jingling and clattering, the rolling of wheels, and a fire-engine dashed past him at topmost speed.

The hesitating uncertain crowds sent up a deafening cheer, closed up behind, and dashed on after it—a theatre-scene being played that dull night for their benefit, and to be had for nothing.

The atmosphere of movement and agitation seemed to put some fresh energy into that saddened soul, some new strength into the nerveless body. He drew himself up from the lamp-post, and passed his hand over his eyes.

“Sorrow in the world for other folks besides us,” he murmured.“Only then, perhaps, they haven’t got the worst of the sting inside themselves, and of their own putting.”

“Tell us whereabout t’ fire be, sir,” demanded a small, grubby-faced boy, pulling along a still smaller one by the hand.

He looked down at the urchins with a faint smile —“I’m not quite sure where it is. Somewhere on there evidently, so you little weaklings had better by half face about and go the other way.”

Of course they did not take his advice, neither did he take his own; but pulling himself together with a resolute shake he fell in with the stream of people all hurrying along in one direction, and soon became as excited as any of his companions.

“Hey! But there was a burst!” he exclaimed as a spire of flame became visible over the tops of the houses.“Whose place is it, I wonder?”

“Two or three people’s, they do say,” answered some one beside him.“It’s a lot of shops caught fire on one o’ them streets between Praed Street and Bishop’s Road. We must be close upon the place now.’

The listener started. He belonged to the other end of London, and had had no idea that his weary feet had brought him to a neighbourhood they had traversed many a time, in the days long gone by. For one moment his impulse was to turn back, but just then he heard a voice, with a half-remembered ring in it, shout imperatively to the thickening masses—

“You people there, can’t you move—can’t you let me pass to my own premises? Make way there.”

“Make way there,” echoed the poor wanderer in a sharp, determined tone as he pushed backwards himself, and pulled others with him. The newcomer on the scene passed close before him, and with a second start and stare of recognition he cried;—

“Is it his place that is on fire?“

“Looks like it, from the state of flurry he’s in, don’t it?” said a woman.

The man had joined the crowds running from all parts, actuated by curiosity; but a very different feeling made him spring forward now and follow close behind the owner of one of the blazing buildings. The master of this shop and his wife had been spending the evening with friends, when news was brought that a shop adjoining his was on fire. Before he reached the place his own premises had begun to bum too.

“But it’s all right, sir,” said a friendly fireman as he caught sight of the tradesman’s white and anxious face.“It’s all right, sir, if so be as you’re insured, for we’ve got the folks out all right.”

A sigh, almost a groan of unutterable relief burst from the anxious listener, but still he could not feel quite satisfied.“You are sure they are all out?” he asked.“The child—where is she?”

The confident look in the man’s eyes faded. “Child!” he repeated slowly,“They—they—were two women.”

“Oh, God!” shrieked the unhappy owner of the burning building.“My child! save my child—my little Eva!”

“Yes, Mr. Chesman,” said a low, firm voice beside him.“With God’s merciful help we will.”

The haggard, sunken-eyed man who had been awhile since leaning against the lamp-post seemed transformed. He had been drearily wondering then if it were wrong to wish for death, since life seemed no longer to mean anything for him, but bitter memories, shame, and heavy idleness.

The vivid hope darted into his mind now, with a burning prayer, that he might at least live long enough to do one unselfish act, to earn one fellow-creature’s blessing. With one bound he had dashed past the firemen and the police, and gained the blazing house.

“Keep back! Your life is in danger,” burst the great cry around him.

“There is a child in here!” came his simple answer, and then he disappeared.

CHAPTER XXXV
LIKE HIS FATHER, AFTER ALL.

Susan Turner’s chat over her long list of troubles, with Mrs. Bennett, had taken up far more time than she was at all aware of. It was past seven o’clock when Will, now the Rev. Mr. William Reece, came to her former enemy’s abode in quest of news of her, and it was nearly nine o’clock when he set out with her to have a few further words in private, and to see the poor heart-worn creature safe into an omnibus on the way home.

Their most direct road was down the street now thronged with people watching the blazing houses. Just as they were about to turn into it, quite unheeding the outskirts of the crowd in the sad interest of their own conversation, a few words caught Susan’s ears. A couple of people were standing together talking.

“Do you know who the brave fellow is, who has gone into that burning pile yonder?”

“Yes, strangely enough, I do. It’s a thing his father would have done. Poor Jim Turner, he’d be more proud-”

But the detective, standing there watching for pick-pockets among the crowd, did not get that sentence finished. A woman’s fingers were on his arm, clutching into the flesh convulsively,

Susan had caught sight of the fire, had heard the. question and answer, and with one frantic rush she had left Will Reece’s side, and stood before the detective, a pair of eyes wild with agony fixed upon his face, her fingers grasping him with a clasp of despair, as she cried in piercing tones,

“What do you say—oh! my God! You cannot say that my boy is burning to death in there!”

No. It was true enough he could not say anything so awful; but he did, all the same, believe that very thing, and his countenance betrayed what his lips kept in. The next instant, with a yet more terrible cry, Susan Turner was forcing herself a way through the masses of people.

“My son, my boy!” she shrieked.“He is all I have in the world! 0 God, have mercy! Give me back my son.”

“The mother of him as is gone in there,” ran the murmur through the throng, and they made way for her to pass.

Even the police and the firemen forbore to hinder that woman, with her terrible grief, from approaching her only child’s living tomb. A father was standing before the burning house, and now a mother stood beside him.

Streams of water from the engines were doing their best to keep down the flames from one portion of the house on which all eyes were now fastened, and the two parents were alternately drenched and scorched, but they paid no heed.

“Is there any hope?” asked a hard, rasping voice from between Mr. Chesman’s lips. The eyes of the woman beside him, lit up with their red light, asked the same question.

For a breathless moment there was no answer. Then—suddenly—the silence was broken. There came a roar rather than speech, almost indistinguishable at first, till the outer ring of tongues took it up, that one word—

“There!”

One word was all that any of those fast-beating hearts could utter, but one word was enough. It told all the full tale of one great pervading awe, one boundless sympathy.

There, at the uppermost window, in a framework of light, with a background of flame, stood a man in his shirt-sleeves; it was a white cotton shirt, but at that moment it seemed made of rose colour. And in the man’s arms there was a great bundle of something wrapped closely in the coat.

“Johnny!” rose up the mother’s hungry cry.

The man up there in the glowing window looked down, and with a shower of golden sparks the words came down at the same time, thrilling the hearers with a strange new comfort—

“Mother, has not God been good to me?”

“Look out!” shouted a voice, as the fire escape rolled up beneath the window. The flames leapt forward-was it in time?

“Ah! wait a moment before you ask,” muttered a sobbing girl in the crowd;“let’s pray that it be.”

‘And then there came the glorious, ringing burst of human sympathy with heroism, and with fellow-creatures’ escape from the threatening of an awful death. Little Eva lay clasped in her father’s arms, sobbing and trembling as she clung to him, and hid her eyes from the fearful glare in which she had so lately been well-nigh enveloped.

“Where are you burnt, my darling, my little one?” asked poor Mr. Chesman, still unable to believe the assurances he had received that his little daughter had been spared to him, wholly unharmed save for the shock to her nerves.

“There’s nothing amiss with her, sir, but fright,” said our acquaintance, the friendly detective.“You get her away from here as soon as ever you can, and let her have something pleasanter to see than these flames, and something quieter to hear than these shouts and falling timbers, and she’ll do well enough.”

Mr. Chesman lifted himself up, still with the shuddering child in his arms.

“Yes,” he said, in a slow, dazed way, poor man,“yes, but where to take her? our comfortable home is gone.”

“Take her to her mother,” said a timely voice, and then Mr. Chesman remembered, for the first time, how terribly anxious his wife must be for news, and the friends also with whom he had left her.

The worthy pair had indulged themselves in a rare piece of gaiety in accepting an invitation to an evening party, and they had not been more than an hour at their host’s house before the news had come of the fire in their street.

Of course Mr. Chesman had hurried off instantly, to see to the safety of premises, servants, and child. But one servant had gone off visiting on her own account, as soon as her mistress’s back was turned, the other went into hysterics when she was fetched out into the flame-illumined road, and the little child was left alone and asleep in a little inner room in the house, and must have died but for John Turner’s self-devotion.

The firemen had been up and down about the house already; but they had passed over that small, windowed cupboard through the parents’ room; and, besides, they had been told that the family was out.

, John found her, and John saved her, wrapping her tightly in his own coat, and so carrying her safely through the flames.

“I took something from you once, sir,” he said.“Now I give you something, and, thank God, more precious.”

And so he had delivered over his precious burden into the arms outstretched to receive it.

Little wonder that the father, in that minute of terrible agitation, had not the least idea who it was who had rescued his daughter, and scarcely heard the words spoken to him, much less understood them.

But Susan Turner knew that young man, for all his scorched cheeks, and the head with the hair burnt ofl, and the burnt eyebrows, and the blistered neck, and she put up her arms around him with a low, sobbing cry—

“He has given you back to me!” and then she fainted.

“And a good thing, too!” ejaculated Mrs. Bennett, who had followed in the wake of everybody else in the neighbourhood to the scene of the fire.

“Poor creature!” said a woman in the crowd,“she’s gone off.”

“And a good thing, too!” was the retort, but in the truest spirit of kindness.“We can get her safe housed now without any fuss, before she comes to. Bring her on after me, my men. I’ll show you the way.”

And while Mrs. Bennett indulged her newly-learned Christian charity, and her old love of importance, by having poor Susan carried to her home close by, a stretcher was brought, and the hero of the hour was carried through the living lane of admiring faces, and away to St. Mary’s Hospital.

. Mr. William Reece walked beside him, saying a few words of praise and encouragement, until, with the waning of excitement, the consciousness of pain grew more intense, and John fell into a swoon even deeper than his mother’s.

An hour or so later, he lay in the hospital bed, swathed in cotton wool, shoulders, neck, head and arms. All the upper part of his body was terribly burnt, and although everything possible had been done for his relief, he was still in great suffering; but yet there was a look of contentment on the poor, scarred, disfigured face. Will Reece bent over him with tenderest pity.

“You know me, my man, do you not?”

“Aye, sir,” with a faint smile;“better than you think for.”

“And you are a little easier now, I hope.”

“Yes, thank you sir. They were so gentle with me.”

“They say you were very brave,” said Will.“And can you still say, as you did at that window yonder, —‘Has not God been good to me?’”

For a moment John forgot pain again, and lifted his scorched eyelids eagerly.

Ah! sir, surely I can. All the past ten days, or more, the dreadful belief has been growing into my mind, that because I had before filled my place in the world so badly, now God had left no place for me any more. I was just a useless cumberer of the ground, waiting to be cut down and thrown away. You know now, sir, that I am John Turner, who you last heard of, as you think, as stealing from Mr. Chesman?”

“Yes?” assented Will, in a questioning tone.

“Ah! but you don’t know that I am the man you were so good to in prison, going on for two years ago.”

Will’s face showed his surprise.

“Surely not the poor fellow I used to know in those days only as Number Twenty?”

“Aye, sir, I have told many lies, but I am telling you the simple truth now, and never can I forget those hours when you used to sit by the poor, ignorant, faithless, despairing prisoner, so patiently, and read my father’s Bible to me. I came out of prison a fortnight ago, so full of hope to prove by my new ways that I had a new heart, and then it began to seem-

“To seem,” interrupted the young clergyman, gently,“to seem, and to be, only this—that the dear Lord saw fit to try your faith and patience, and to lead you along the road to Him in His way, and not yours. And now, when He saw fit, He has given you a noble work to do, and grace to do it nobly. Will you not try to believe that, Turner?”

“Yes,” murmured John, faintly.“His work, His strength, His grace—that is what I mean, only I think-”

And there his voice failed, and at a sign from the nurse, Will gave the new patient a parting blessing, and took his leave for the night, just in time to prevail upon Susan to wait until the morning before giving her son the agitation of another meeting, with her sorrow-stricken face.

u Things might have been so much worse,” sobbed Mrs. Chesmau, as she knelt beside her little child thanking God with a full heart for having spared her.

“And the Insurance office will soon build up your home again,” said her sympathetic friend cheerfully.

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE NEW PARTNER.

On the same day on which the fire occurred in Paddington, but a few hours earlier, a young man sprang out of the train at a quiet little country station in Norfolk, grasped his little leather portmanteau, and walked off up the lane and across the fields towards the distant spire of the village church, as if his feet were shod with wings.

It was a dingy day, with a bitter east wind blowing. It had been a dingy-looking day in London when he left town, and it was a dingy-looking day here in the country, for yesterday there had been a south-west wind with torrents of rain, and to-day’s wind had only as yet brought up the damp into the air, without drying it up.

“Dismal weather, sir,” growled out a rheumatic field-labourer, as he hobbled along the field-path past him.

“Yes, indeed, most delicious,” was the cheerful, unconscious response, to the scornful indignation of the countryman, who went on his way muttering,

“Well, if you bean’t deaf or daft, my name ain’t Jem Dyer. Mebbe he’s both, and dafter nor deaf besides.”

But all the same Charles Bennett was neither, although the peasant’s name really was Jem Dyer. It was only that Charles had got so much sunshine and happy warmth within, that he could neither feel nor see the chill cheerlessness without.

That very day his name had been painted up for the first time outside Mr. Chesman’s shop. He had waited to see how it looked, and then he had started off to his first best friends to tell them of his new dignity, and to receive their congratulations. It was no wonder he thought the passer-by had said the weather was delicious instead of dismal. He had taken no holiday for more than fifteen months, so he had well earned a right to one now to carry his good news himself.

On his arrival at the vicarage he was shown into the dining-room. Mr. and Mrs. King were both there. Mrs. Eng was helping Frankie to learn his lessons for the morrow, Mr. King was reading. The table was being laid for tea by Milly, neater in person, and gentler in manner, sweeter in face at sixteen than she had been two years ago! She smiled a bright welcome at her former friend.

The clergyman and his wife were as pleased as they were surprised at the information brought them by their old Sunday-school pupil. He had advanced a step higher than they had ventured to hope for him as yet.

“But I suppose now, Bennett,” said Mr. King with a smile,“I suppose now, you will be losing no time before you bring us another piece of intelligence.”

Charles Bennett’s face flushed slightly as he asked —“What is that to be, sir?”

The smile gave way to a laugh—“Why, that you are going to be married, to be sure.”

Bennett’s eyes were following a pair of hands arranging cups and plates on the table.“I don’t think that you will hear that news for another three or four years if you please, sir. I mean to wait.”

CHAPTER XXXVII
IN ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL.

Different people have such different ideas of comfort. If any one had asked John Turner his opinion on the matter, about three weeks after the burning of Mr. Chesman’s butter-shop, he would have declared that lying in a hospital bed, almost free from pain, and with a sense of growing peace in the conscience, was as near an approach to perfect comfort as could be well imagined. He said something of the sort, one afternoon, and his mother replied, half-tearfully—

“Ah! John dear, I know the days when you’d have thought it nigh upon the height of misery to be bound to be still, excepting when you were that tired as you were glad to go to bed and sleep.” Turner smiled quietly.“Aye, mother; I’d not overmuch fondness for lying awake in those days, had I? But then, you see, I hadn’t known in those days what it was to lie awake a goodish bit with a lot of pain. The last two days, since I have been feeling easy once more, I don’t seem to fancy as I’d care to change with a king in his palace.” Susan Turner’s face turned paler. The doctor had said a few days ago that her son must not be allowed to sink into lethargy, if possible, and she began to fear his peacefulness meant that now.

“My dear Jack,” she began tremulously;“I—I don’t wish as you should care to change with a king. But I’ll be thankful enough when you get your strength back sufficient to change to our own home again, you know.”

At those words a shadow fell over the scarred features of the patient, and his swathed arms moved for a few moments restlessly on the coverlet. Susan bent over him with increased anxiety.

“What is it, my poor boy? Are you in so much suffering?”

“Only of mind, mother. Do what I will, I can’t keep hold of my new trust in God’s fatherly love whenever I begin to think of the future. For months to come I shan’t be strong enough, I am afraid, for rough work as a day-labourer, and I’ve no chance of getting taken on for anything else without a character.”“Then I’ll manage well enough for both of us. Never you go to fretting about anything of that sort,” began Susan.“You shan’t want for-”

“I!” interrupted John quickly.“Oh, mother dear, it’s not myself I am thinking of. It’s you, with me for a burden again upon your back.”

Mrs. Turner put back his hair tenderly from the still discoloured forehead.“If you are thinking of me, my boy, the kindest thing you can do that way will be to think of what a joy it is to me to have you yet spared to earn the daily bread for. And, never fear—we’ll have enough.”

“ To be sure you will, please God,” broke in the hearty voice of some one who had just come up to the bed unperceived, and had heard Susan Turner’s last answer to her son’s sad confession of his troubled thoughts.

Mother and son both started slightly as they heard the voice. But they did more than start when they discovered to whom the voice belonged. Susan took a hasty step as though she were about to fly, and a deep, burning glow of colour overspread John’s pallid countenance. The newcomer’s own complexion became of a darker tint than usual, at the signs given so unmistakably that his absence would have been more welcome than his presence. But his especial business in life was one that had little in common with nervousness or shyness. Long before Mrs. Turner had decided whether to take another step in retreat, or her son’s cheeks had faded to their usual paleness, their companion had regained his composure.

“Jack,” he said, in the same friendly tone as before, only in a lower key,“you’ll forgive my coming to see how you are getting along, won’t you? It wasn’t my fault, you know, that Drummond & Mellon employed me that Whit-Monday two years. I was bound to go where I was ordered.”

Turner made a movement to reach up one of his bandaged hands. But with a little wince of pain he dropped it back again.

“Ah,” he said, quietly,“never mind, you’ll take the will for the deed, Mr. Wing. I would shake hands with you if I could, in proof of gratitude for the pull-up you gave me that day. If it had not been for you, I might have been sunk in the mire of sin, by now, too deep for any power to get me out again.”

The detective seated himself on the edge of the bed as he answered,“Ah, Jack, I said something of that sort about myself once, to your father. Declared I had already got drowned in that black mire, in fact; but he said, as the doctors here in the hospital say—While there’s life there’s hope! Out of that very same little Bible that I see at your head, there, he read me a text— “though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as wool! So long as the tree is not cut down, power is still granted it to bear good fruit instead of evil”

John sighed.“The only power granted me now seems to be the one I have as yet only half got hold of.”

“What’s that? The power of sleeping, the power of getting well again, or the power of lying still? Perhaps all combined. So much the better for you.”

The sufferer began to smile again.“Yes, indeed, -and it is so much the better for me. I readily admit that; although I wasn’t thinking of any of those blessings .at the moment-r-I was referring, in a grumbling spirit, I am sorry to say, to the patience I suppose I shall have to exercise in having no other power to do anything.”

“Why, nonsense! To be sure, I remember now, you were talking about daily bread when I came up, and it was the very matter I came here to-day to have a chat with you about I’ve been in once before; but nurse yonder said you weren’t to be agitated, so I walked off again, and kept out of sight a bit. You’re stronger now, and able to agitate yourself, it seems; so I shan’t do much harm if I add something to your speculations.”

“You’ve added something already,” murmured John, with a glance round at his Bible. And the detective followed his look with a friendly nod, and then turned to Susan with another reassuring nod and smile.

“I have had Jack a good deal on my mind of late, ma’am. And if you only knew how helpful his father used to be to me, you’d not wonder that I wish to be of some help to your son. And you and he can do me a good turn too, if you will.”

Susan stared. All Of a sudden the usually calm, cool man had become embarrassed in look and manner. The truth of the matter was, he was intent upon doing these people a benefit, in payment for a long-felt debt, and he was quite afraid lest any awkwardness, in his way of putting it, should cause it to be rejected.

“Yes, sir,” said Susan at last, as he still hesitated, got up from the bed, and then sat down again, and fidgeted with the brim of his hat as he had not done for the last twenty years.

It was part of Susan Turner’s very nature to grow confident as other folks grew nervous. She began to feel just a touch of pitying contempt for the individual she had hitherto so feared. But the whole business was explained after a time.

‘Mr. Wing had saved a tidy little sum of money.

Mr. Wing’s wife’s brother was a builder, and had run up a couple of neat houses for his brother-in-law out Highbury way. And it would, at any rate according to his own account, be doing Mr. Wing a real service if the Turners would save their rent for the next few weeks by living in one of his abodes, and looking after them both for awhile.

“You see I should have to pay somebody a few shillings a week, Jack, for doing it till they’re let, and I’d sooner pay them to you than to anyone else. So, if you wouldn’t mind—”

And there he had to stop, for John minded so much the generosity and kind thought that had prompted the offer, that he began to tremble from head to foot. As for Susan, she picked up a corner of her shawl, dropped her face into it, and sobbed aloud till the nurse came and pulled her away with a good scolding. It was the best thing she could bestow under the circumstances, and did more towards calming John than any amount of gentle words addressed to himself would have done.

“It’s not my mother’s fault I’m so stupid,” he remonstrated.“It’s my own. You must punish me, nurse; not her.”

“I’ll punish the whole of you, all the way round, by not letting you see each other again for a month, if you don’t take care,” returned nurse, half-laughing, half-reproachfully.

But perhaps they did take care. At any rate she did not keep her threat; and although the unexpected glad prospect of paying work, which he would probably be very soon able to accept, made John Turner very feverish for a few hours, he began to mend so rapidly after that day that the doctors told him he must have discovered some patent way of curing himself, and he ought to make it public.

From his babyhood he had been a favourite, and he was a favourite in the hospital, although the fire had not left much of his good looks to boast of. But there was the same endeavour to save others trouble, the same grateful smile for kindness, the same deep love for his mother, and there was something more besides, nowadays. An expression of humility on the face, a wistful look in the dark-blue eyes that called forth sympathy from even careless hearts.

“This is our hero,” said the house-surgeon one day, with a smile, as he brought a visitor up to the side of Turner’s bed.“He went in for a forlorn hope, the only volunteer, and came out conqueror.”

Turner raised his grave eyes to the stranger’s face.

“Not much credit due to me, sir, for doing it, for I was well-nigh desperate at the time. Hadn’t even so much as even a forlorn hope left in my life; and it wasn’t doing much to risk it, you see, for the sake of doing one worthy thing at least before I died. I’d scarce ever done ought before but what I’d ne^d to blush at.”

The visitor stooped his head a little lower over the patient.

“We must all make the same confession, my friend. We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

He was about to add more, when quick, firm steps were heard coming up the ward.

John’s countenance lighted up with an eager smile, and the next instant he exclaimed, in tones of glad welcome—

“Mr. Reece! Oh, sir, I am so glad to see you.”

“And so am I,” said the stranger, with a laugh of amusement at the astonishment depicted on the last comer’s face.

As for Mr. William Reece, the new curate at St. Austin’s, Whitechapel, he stood there without saying a word in acknowledgment of the kind greetings. His mouth slightly open, as if surprise had stolen his breath away.

“Well, I never!” he slowly ejaculated at last.“Who would ever have expected to find you here ? Where do you come from, pray?”

If the first of his two unlooked-for visitors had answered,“From the moon,” Turner would have scarcely wondered after this preamble.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
THEIR OLD FRIEND, MRS. BARKER.

Our last chapter left the burnt hospital patient in a state of mystification as to one of the gentlemen at his bedside. But he had not long to wait to learn that the stranger was not really one of Mons. Jules Verne’s visitors to the moon.

In smiling reply to Will Reece’s question, where he came from, the stranger clergyman answered,

“Well, Will, if you go back half an hour, I came from King’s Cross Station; if you go back four hours and a half, I came from my vicarage, and Edith charged me with her love to you, and so did little Edie and the others. If you want to know why I came, while my curate is making holiday, I must say I am only here until to-morrow.” His voice grew graver as he continued—

“Dear old Mrs. Barker is passing away to her rest, Edith has just heard, and has expressed a wish to see me before she dies. On my way to her I have come in here, to make acquaintance with one I have known so long by name.”

He stopped, and turned kindly to John, who said sadly:“Ah! sir, it was never your fault that we were not acquainted! Had we been, the past two years might have been very different ones to ___ _» me.

Mr. King laid his hand gently on the sick man’s shoulder.“So I have thought, Turner; but, you see, even out of evil our heavenly Father has worked good. The chain of events has led to your saving the life of little Eva Chesman.”

John’s face brightened again.“Ah! sir, it is good of you to say that, for, whenever I get hold of that thought, I feel more comforted than I can tell you. It seems like a sign to me of pardon, having been let to be some use. But I did hear that the poor little missie fell ill with the fright.”

“Yes,” said the clergyman.“It was so; but she is fast growing strong now; she is staying with some relations in the country, not far from my parish. And they say that you are to go down there too; to be nursed back into strength, as soon as ever you are well enough for the journey. I am going to arrange about it all with your mother.”

And having astonished and cheered the hospital patient with that wonderfully unexpected piece of news, Mr. King left him to think it over, and went away with his brother-in-law to pay a visit to dear Mrs. Barker in her kitchen.

There was no pain or sorrow attending on that death-bed. All was peace and growing light.

“Tell Johnnie Turner,” she murmured with her feeble breath—“please tell him that his slippers have been such a comfort to me ever since he give them. I’ve worn them up to the last. I’ve felt sure all along as the dear Lord would have mercy upon His poor straying lamb.”

“You have prayed for him, I know,” said Mr. King.

The old woman’s dimmed eyes shone for a moment with reviving light.“Prayed for him! Aye, that I have, night and morning; and many and many a time the week through besides. But he was the child of many prayers besides mine. His father knew well to whose Almighty care to trust him, and the trust is being justified.”

There was a slight pause, and then Mr. King remembered one of his wife’s most important messages. Had Mrs. Barker any one to look after her —to keep things comfortable about her, and to nurse her?

One of the thin withered hands was lifted from the counterpane, and a finger pointed around the room—at the clear little fire in the brightly-polished grate, at the neat table, the clean window.

“Aye, sir; and that I just have, indeed. If I were the Queen upon her throne I couldn’t have a nurse to beat mine for kindness and gumption. Talk o’ seeing inside folks’ minds! I don’t never need to say when I want my pillow shook up a bit, nor a drop o’ warm tea to drink. Susan guesses somehow before ever I speak.”

And at that moment there came a tap at the door, and Susan Turner entered with a steaming jug of beef-tea, sent across by the opposite neighbour, Mrs. Bennett. Susan’s face flushed deeply when she recognised the elder of the two gentlemen with her sick friend. But Mr. King went forward to her with extended hands.

“I have just been hearing your praises, Mrs. Turner. How kind you are to our dear old friend here.”

Susan’s head sank low for the instant; hut, making a great effort with herself, she lifted it again, and said bravely, although in very low, quivering tones:

“ Please, sir, I don’t deserve any thanks or praises either. I hoye I’ve done with cheating, even to so much as getting good words that I don’t deserve, for the rest of my life.”

“Please God,” was the earnest, low-voiced answer. And then, in a louder key,“But you are not, then, nursing Mrs. Barker?”

The questioner looked somewhat mystified till Mrs. Turner said quickly,“Oh, yes sir, I am. Least-ways, doing all as I well know how for the poor dear. But I couldn’t anyways do less, seeing as it’s the greatest mercy to me to be saved house-rent just now by living here, and it’s such a comfort to be so near my boy. Mrs. Barker has been good to me all through, and she’s good to the end. It’s growing clearer to me now, her teaching.

CHAPTER XXXIX
A NORFOLK TEA-PARTY.

If there is one thing pleasanter than another, in the way of a holiday treat, it certainly is tea in a hay-field, with plenty of strawberries and cream, and a party of folks all fully determined to be happy.

Mr. Chesman’s kind wishes for John Turner, as regarded a country excursion for the benefit of his health, had been bound to wait fulfilment for some months. It was some way into January of a new year, after the fire, that the chief sufferer from that disaster was well enough to be discharged from the hospital And then the doctors assured both him and his mother that he would decidedly need to return thither, very soon, if he went into the unaccustomed cold and damp of a wet winter in the country.

“You’ll be much better off for the present,” said the house-surgeon,“in one of your friend Mr. Wing’s houses.”

And so, shortly after old Mrs. Barker’s death, the Turners found themselves domiciled up at Highbury. It seemed strange enough to them, at first— actually living in rooms belonging to a man they had wrongly enough regarded, at one time, as their bitterest enemy. But he did everything he could to convince them of his friendship; and when one of his houses was let, he even put off a tenant for the other until, on one of the warm, long days at the end of May, a second invitation to the Norfolk farm was brought to the Turners by Mr Chesman himself.

“And it won’t be one bit of good to try to put me off this time with any denial,” he said, resolutely;“for I’ve already bought your railway tickets, good for a fortnight. And I’ll bring a cab round here for you, myself, to-morrow at two precisely. And if you don’t go willingly, why, I daresay I and Eva, and Mr. King and the cabman, between us, could manage to carry you off by force. We’d have a try, at any rate.”

But neither John nor Susan had a desire to put Mr. Chesman to any such vigorous exertion and trouble on their account. They packed up, were ready in the hall when the cab drove up at the appointed hour, and were only too glad to accept the charge of little Eva on the journey down.

Thus it came to pass that the Turners once more were brought within the cheerful, healing influence of Edith King, and of Mrs Reece, who was enjoying herself immensely for a few weeks in the society of her grandchildren. Her sympathies seemed to have grown larger and wider than ever. It was a hint from her that had led to the out-of-door tea-party for the last evening of the Turners’ visit.

Mr. Chesman’s hospitable sister and her farmer-before; but nurse yonder said you weren’t to be agitated, so I walked off again, and kept out of sight a bit. You’re stronger now, and able to agitate yourself, it seems; so I shan’t do much harm if I add something to your speculations.”

“You’ve added something already,” murmured John, with a glance round at his Bible. And the detective followed his look with a friendly nod, and then turned to Susan with another reassuring nod and smile.

“I have had Jack a good deal on my mind of late, ma’am. And if you only knew how helpful his father used to be to me, you’d not wonder that I wish to be of some help to your son. And you and he can do me a good turn too, if you will.”

Susan stared. All of a sudden the usually calm, cool man had become embarrassed in look and manner. The truth of the matter was, he was intent upon doing these people a benefit, in payment for a long-felt debt, and he was quite afraid lest any awkwardness, in his way of putting it, should cause it to be rejected.

“Yes, sir,” said Susan at last, as he still hesitated, got up from the bed, and then sat down again, and fidgeted with the brim of his hat as he had not done for the last twenty years.

It was part of Susan Turner’s very nature to grow confident as other folks grew nervous. She began to feel just a touch of pitying contempt for the individual she had hitherto so feared. But the whole business was explained after a time.

Mr. Wing had saved a tidy little sum of money.

Mr. Wing’s wife’s brother was a builder, and had run up a couple of neat houses for his brother-in-law out Highbury way. And it would, at any rate according to his own account, be doing Mr. Wing a real service if the Turners would save their rent for the next few weeks by living in one of his abodes, and looking after them both for awhile.

“You see I should have to pay somebody a few shillings a week, Jack, for doing it till they’re let, and I’d sooner pay them to you than to anyone else. So, if you wouldn’t mind-”

And there he had to stop, for John minded so much the generosity and kind thought that had prompted the offer, that he began to tremble from head to foot. As for Susan, she picked up a corner of her shawl, dropped her face into it, and sobbed aloud till the nurse came and pulled her away with a good scolding. It was the best thing she could bestow under the circumstances, and did more towards calming John than any amount of gentle words addressed to himself would have done.

“It’s not my mother’s fault I’m so stupid,” he remonstrated.“It’s my own. You must punish me, nurse; not her.”

“I’ll punish the whole of you, all the way round, by not letting you see each other again for a month, if you don’t take care,” returned nurse, half-laughing, half-reproachfully.

But perhaps they did take care. At any rate she did not keep her threat; and although the unexpected glad prospect of paying work, which he would probably be very soon able to accept, made John Turner before; but nurse yonder said you weren’t to be agitated, so I walked off again, and kept out of sight a bit. You’re stronger now, and able to agitate yourself, it seems; so I shan’t do much harm if I add something to your speculations.”

“You’ve added something already,” murmured John, with a glance round at his Bible. And the detective followed his look with a friendly nod, and then turned to Susan with another reassuring nod and smile.

“I have had Jack a good deal on my mind of late, ma’am. And if you only knew how helpful his father used to be to me, you’d not wonder that I wish to be of some help to your son. And you and he can do me a good turn too, if you will”

Susan stared. All of a sudden the usually calm, cool man had become embarrassed in look and manner. The truth of the matter was, he was intent upon doing these people a benefit, in payment for a long-felt debt, and he was quite afraid lest any awkwardness, in his way of putting it, should cause it to be rejected.

“Yes, sir,” said Susan at last, as he still hesitated, got up from the bed, and then sat down again, and fidgeted with the brim of his hat as he had not done for the last twenty years.

It was part of Susan Turner’s very nature to grow confident as other folks grew nervous. She began to feel just a touch of pitying contempt for the individual she had hitherto so feared. But the whole business was explained after a time.

Mr. Wing had saved a tidy little sum of money.

Mr. Wing’s wife’s brother was a builder, and had run up a couple of neat houses for his brother-in-law out Highbury way. And it would, at any rate according to his own account, be doing Mr. Wing a real service if the Turners would save their rent for the next few weeks by living in one of his abodes, and looking after them both for awhile.

“You see I should have to pay somebody a few shillings a week, Jack, for doing it till they’re let, and I’d sooner pay them to you than to anyone else. So, if you wouldn’t mind-”

And there he had to stop, for John minded so much the generosity and kind thought that had prompted the offer, that he began to tremble from head to foot. As for Susan, she picked up a corner of her shawl, dropped her face into it, and sobbed aloud till the nurse came and pulled her away with a good scolding. It was the best thing she could bestow under the circumstances, and did more towards calming John than any amount of gentle words addressed to himself would have done.

“It’s not my mother’s fault I’m so stupid,” he remonstrated.“It’s my own. You must punish me, nurse; not her.”

“I’ll punish the whole of you, all the way round, by not letting you see each other again for a month, if you don’t take care,” returned nurse, half-laughing, half-reproachfully.

But perhaps they did take care. At any rate she did not keep her threat; and although the unexpected glad prospect of paying work, which he would probably be very soon able to accept, made John Turner And then Susan escaped to her own small rose-scented, white-curtained bedroom, and dropped on her knees by the bedside, smothering her scalding tears in the snowy counterpane.

Now, indeed, she was beginning to feel that it was more blessed to give than to receive,—more blessed to help than to be helped. But the dark days were not yet lying so far behind her that she could forget to mourn over them—days when, had she been sent with those strawberries to the poor old fisherman, her fingers would have been busy amongst the best of them before the basket reached the invalid.

Blushes, as well as hot tears, burnt her cheeks now, at the humiliating memories.

“Oh! for a clear conscience,” she sighed; as many another one has sighed before her.

CHAPTER XL
MILLY CRID CHANGES HER NAME.

We have been present at one wedding already during the course of this tale—the wedding of the good young clergyman, Mr. King, and sweet Edith Reece. That wedding was at Trinity Church, Paddington. Now we have the pleasant task of witnessing another.

Mr. King and his wife are present at this one also, although not as principals on this occasion-Mr. King is the officiating clergyman at the ceremony, and Mrs. King is looking on with a most bright, well-satisfied countenance, her children grouped around her, all dressed in their best, to grace the day.

These little ones have baskets of flowers on their arms almost as big as themselves, and the blossoms are piled up in a way that shows very evidently that no niggard hands have filled them. Literally“good measure and running over.”

“What a fine heap of roses and geraniums you have got there, Frank,” said a gentleman who had just entered, and walked up the aisle of the pretty country church in a stream of sunlight. He stopped when he reached the gay party, and stooped over the baskets, inhaling the rich fragrance of their contents.

Frank held up his light burden with a well-pleased smile.

“Yes, uncle. Mamma said we might gather what we chose, and as many as we chose. And if we had gathered all we have in the garden, we could scarcely give as much to Milly as she gave to mamma on her wedding-day, when she took the flowers out of her penny bunches to lay on the steps of grandpapa’s house in London.

Edith the second raised her soft brown eyes.“You have heard of all that, uncle, haven’t you ?”

“Yes, indeed.” Uncle George Bramston had heard many a time the story of the gentle little flower-seller’s kind thought for the lady who had been good to the boy she was so grateful to for his kindness to herself.

And now Milly Crid was no longer a poor, pinched-looking, half-clad, half-fed child; but a bright, healthy, bonny-looking young woman. And this was her wedding-day.

Almost the first gentle, pitying looks and words she had ever received in her life had been bestowed upon her by the young errand-boy, Charles Bennett Perhaps she fell in love with him then, that long-ago day, when she was only seven years old. At any rate, if not, she told him, when he asked her if she loved him well enough to marry him, that she had never cared for any one in the whole wide world half as much as for him, since that first day, and if she did not marry him she was quite sure that she should never marry any one else.

And so now the well-to-do young butterman was going to marry pretty Milly, and although she was not so high in the social scale as himself, not only his mother and other relatives, but the inhabitants of all that Norfolk parish, thought he was doing a first-rate thing for himself in securing such a wife as Milly Crid—so modest, pretty, sensible, and clever.

As far as the opinion of the King family was concerned on the subject, it must be confessed that, much as they liked Charles Bennett, their affection for his promised bride had grown so great that, on the whole, they considered he was the one who was really getting the best of the bargain.

But to return to Canton Church.

“Where is Auntie Eva?” asked little, laughingeyed Ina, looking around the aisles with an eager air, more intent upon seeing her favourite aunt, at the moment, than discussing the history of bygone days. But her own eyes answered her question for her before her uncle could.

The bridegroom had made his appearance some minutes since, and now there was a stir and bustle at the church porch. A loud whisper ran from mouth to mouth. The village children crowded down together like a little flock of sheep gathering in a circle from a barking puppy. Only this flock was approaching the advancing individual, instead of retreating.

“There’s Auntie Eva!” ejaculated Ina, the next moment.“And, oh! Look at her basket!”

She might well exclaim. Just inside the door, on either side, stood Eva and her brother Will, so abundantly provided with floral gifts that, before they had finished flinging their great handfuls in the path of the young bride, the whole way up the church was strewn with fragrance and bright colour.

As the bride passed her, Eva stayed her for a few instants. Her right hand held the large basket, so she laid the left on her arm,—that left hand, adorned with the wedding-ring, and its handsome keeper of emeralds and diamonds, bought six years ago at Drummond & Mellon’s.

“Milly dear,” she said, gently,“many blessings have come to you from your grateful spirit. Never forget, in the coming years, for all things to give thanks to God.”

“Please God, ma’am, never,” murmured Milly, with trembling lips and tear-filled eyes.

And then she continued her way up to the communion rails, where Charles and Mr. King stood awaiting her, and she was very soon no longer Milly Crid, but Milly Bennett, and the whole party returned to the vicarage, where a plentiful meal was being tastefully arranged on the lawn for the bride and bridegroom and their wedding guests.

Of course all the little Kings were of the party, until the little three-year-old took to beating Charles“for taking away her Milly,” and then she was taken away herself, poor little mite.

“Do you go back to London at once, Bennett?” asked Mr. Bramston, as the afternoon wore on, and Milly was taking a leave, composed more of smiles. and tears than words, of her kind mistress and the children.

Charles answered with a little justifiable pride—

“Oh no, sir. I have been saving up a trifle, so to say, against this time, and I can well afford to give Milly a real bit of a holiday for once in her life, before she settles down to her housekeeping.”

Mr. Bramston smiled with sympathy.

“But how about the business, Bennett, now that Mr. Chesman has retired? Will that be good enough to take care of itself while you are away, do you think?”

A graver expression came on the bridegroom’s happy countenance.

“No, sir. But I have left it in far better hands than my own. John Turner has twice the head that I have, and since I contrived at length to persuade him last year to take a real share of the management, I am astonished myself at the increase in the profits. Mr. Chesman was looking over the books, a few days ago, and by his advice we are taking a second shop at Hotting Hill, which Turner and his mother will see to entirely.”

The hearer shook his head somewhat doubtfully at this intelligence. He had not forgotten his own misplaced admiration of the silk-mercers’ assistant.“Can you really trust them so far as that? You see, you must remember-”

“I can trust them as far as myself, sir, and further. I trust them utterly,” came the emphatic reply.

And then Charles Bennett was told by Mr. King, that if he wished to get to Lowestoft that day he must leave at once; and, hurrying Milly’s last goodbyes, the happy pair set off for their honeymoon trip to the sea-side.

We return for a final adieu to London.

CHAPTER XLI
THE PURPLE-LEATHER BIBLE ONCE MORE.

A small sitting-room, as neat as hands can make it. A pretty woman, with streaks of silver in her hair, and rather a wistful expression in her eyes, but dressed in a well-fitting, rich-coloured blue merino, with fresh frills at the wrists and throat, and a neat black brooch by way of a finish to the toilet.

“I like you to look nice, mother dear,” said John, one day, when the bitterness of shame was wearing somewhat away under sweeter influences.“I don’t believe that we are meant to look dowdy, dismal sights in the world, by way of proving our penitence. It will give me more courage to see you look nice, mother. You used to. Please do so again.”

And John’s wish was law to his mother nowadays. She began by resuming her old nattiness to gratify him, and by degrees she happily began to take a wholesome pride once more in herself and her home, and when she was installed as book-keeper and mistress of the house at the new business at Hotting Hill, she was fully prepared to do justice to her position and her new duties. She had begun to understand that bravely and earnestly fulfilling her allotted tasks in the world, and setting the best example she possibly could to her son and to her neighbours, was a nobler and a more acceptable way of proving regret for bygone errors than sitting wringing idle hands over the past, and indulging in vain fits of moping.

Sometimes, in long, earnest conversations with her most faithful friend, Mrs. Reece, the tears would have their way again for a few minutes, but these were tears rather of healing than of bitterness.

Sundays had become real Sabbaths to the mother and son now—real rest-days, although John had latterly found a very fresh employment for some of its hours. As we peep into that back parlour, a few minutes before five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, we see Mrs. Turner helping her one small maid to lay the tea-table; and with some care to give it a certain festive air, too, apparently.

The pair are moving about very softly, so as not to disturb their companions—John Turner, and three ragged, rough-headed little urchins, some ten or eleven years old, who are having a lesson out of the little purple-leather Bible.

Some four months ago John had stumbled over one of these boys, trying to steal a lean bit of steak lying on the open slab of a small butcher’s shop. He had caught the trembling, half-starved child by the shoulder, marched him home with him, given him a good meal, and then given him a graphic account of his own past life.

“If you don’t steal anything between this and Sunday, you may come again then,” said John, with a pitying pat to the ignorant, small head.“And you shall have another good meal, meat, and jam too.”

And thus it came to pass that John found work to do in his Lord’s vineyard, and by degrees had a Sunday-School of his own in the back-parlour of the cheesemonger’s shop at Notting Hill, with the purple-leather Bible for lesson-book.

Jim Turner’s notes were read and studied now with a new intentness, and he threw many a bright beam of light on the path heavenward of wife and son.

“For what a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

The small clock on the mantelpiece struck five. The little maid put the full teapot on the table, and Mrs. Turner looked at her son.

“John dear, tea is ready; are you and your scholars ready to come to it?”

To judge by the said scholars’ sparkling eyes and suddenly-closed books, they were most decidedly ready to obey the summons.

Their teacher smiled at his mother and at them.

“Excuse us just one minute, mother. Phil Bent is to show us on the clock what time it is, if he can, before we take our places. He says that he got here to-day at three o’clock, because the clock at the railway station told him it was already four. Now I want to find out whether it was really the clock who told fibs, or—”

And there John paused a few moments, and the smile passed from his face and left it rather serious, as he repeated—

“I want to find out whether the clock told the fibs or some one else.”

“But how can you find out that, sir,” half-whispered one of the lads,“unless Phil Bent tells you?”

“You shall soon see,” was the quiet answer.“Come here, Phil. Now, my lad, what o’clock is it now?”

“Five,” answered Phil, triumphantly.

That reply was safe enough, seeing that he knew five to be the tea-hour of his new, good friends.

But there was a second question to come.

“How do you know that it is five, Phil? Show me on the clock?”

Then Phil’s face grew scarlet. He lifted his right hand, and put it on the black marble case of the little gold-faced clock, and he lifted -his left hand and rubbed up his hair into a greater muddle than before, and gulped out—

“I dunno nowt about the clock; I dunno how to tell it.”

And then he looked round at the well-spread table with mingled longing and despair, and burst into tears.

John put his hand on his shoulder, and led him to a seat.

“You will try not to tell me a falsehood again, my boy, won’t you? Be honest in word and deed. Teach all men to trust you, for I have learnt, and so will you, that ‘What a man soweth, that shall he also reap”

And then Mr. Field arrived, and the whole party sat down to tea.

THE END.