toms, even those that seem to us most "natural," because our patient natures have been so completely twisted into them, as the jar to the jar-bred Chinese dwarf. Casting such a glance from outside at our gaslight habits, we suddenly see something absurd in them. Standing in a crowded and brilliantlyglaring room, half deafened by the horrible discord of a hundred jabbering tongues, we find it a relic of barbarism. We see the dancing rings of savages, yelling and beating tom-toms around a blazing fire. How much better off all these people would be, we think (supposing the din and confusion permit us to hear ourselves think), if they were all comfortably in bed, preparing their nervous machinery for a sane and energetic to-morrow! For my part, I should be glad if I could go back and cut away from my life all that ever occurred in it beyond early bedtime, as a cook goes round a pieplate and shears off the out-lying dough. Mere ragged and formless shreds of existence, those gaslight hours have been, containing, on the whole, far more evil than good; far more yawns, and the dreadful pangs of yawns suppressed, than refreshing eyebeams and voices.

I

Then there is another thing; could not the act of going to bed be made, from childhood up, a less depressing operation? The one daily torture of my own otherwise kindly-handled childhood was the going to bed in the dark. hated the dark, and have always hated it. Why could not some softly-shaded light have been left for me to go to sleep by, and then withdrawn, instead of crushing down on my wide-awake eyes that horrible club of blackness? Or how much better to have "cuddled doon" in the still faintly-glimmering twilight, and let the slowly-coming starlight draw the child to sleepiness, and softly "kiss his eyelids down!"

And why must one assume a garb for

the night that even the child feels to be ridiculously unsuitable? To take off one's warm and comfortably-fitting garments, and barely cover the shrinking pudency of the limbs with some brief apology of flapping inadequateness-it is an insult to the Angel of Sleep. They do this better, I am told, in Japan. There the man has a nightsuit of entire and comely garments. He does not unclothe and then halfclothe himself, and sneak in mortified helplessness underneath a weight of vein-compressing sheets and blankets and uncomfortable "comfortables," squeezing him out as if he had covered himself with the cellar door. He lies down in his complete warm suit, and throws over him some light affair of gossamer silk. It only needs the sudden cry of "fire" in the house to make us realize the preposterous condition we are every one of us in.

The time of going to bed ought, in some ways, to be made the pleasantest, and most decorous, and most dignified, even-if you like-the most picturesque and, certainly, the most comfortable hour of the whole twenty-four. Then it would need no polite euphemism of "retiring" to veil its horrors. Then the child would no longer hold back from it, as if he were being thrust into a hideous cave of darkness, to be seized by all the nightmares of Dreamdom.

And, then, best of all, we should be ready to rise at the whistle of the first chirping bird-perfectly rested, thoroughly refreshed, with the brain vocal only with light echoes of the wholesome day before, instead of still jangling with the cultured rumpus of a "social evening," or an "evening of amusement," or the uncanny fevered visions which are only such evenings gone to seed. We should see the heavens at their purest, on earth peace, the big, white stars at their best, unconfused by the haze of the smaller stars and the star-dust, and shining

I had no money at all; not a single, solitary shilling-my obliging friends, when they put their purse into my pocket as a proof of alleged robbery, abstracted my own-which, no doubt, the worthy Professor of Sacred Theology had in his pocket while he was explaining the nature of the attack to the Constable.

The turnkey, while he grumbled about waste of time-a prisoner ought to say at once if he had no money; officers of the Prison were not paid to tell stories to every ragged, filthy footpad; the common side was as good as any other on the way to Tyburn; what could a ragamuffin, covered with blood and filth, expect?-picked out a pair of irons; they were the rustiest and heaviest that he could find. As he hammered them on he said that for half a crown he would drive the rivet into

From The Orange Girl. By Sir Walter Besant. Copyright, 1899, Dodd, Mead & Co. Price, $1.50

my heel, only that he would rob his friend, Jack Ketch, of the pleasure of turning off a poor, whining devil, who came into Newgate without a copper.

"Damme!" he cried, as he finished his work, "if I believe you ever tried to rob any one!"

"I did not," I replied. At which he laughed, recovering his good temper, and opening a door shoved me through and shut it behind me.

The common side of Newgate is a place which, though I was in it no more than two hours or so, remains fixed in my memory, and will stay there as long as life remains. The yard was filled to overflowing with a company of the vilest, the filthiest, and the most shameless that it is possible to imagine. They were pickpockets, footpads, shoplifters, robbers of every kind; they were in rags; they were unwashed and unshaven; some of them were drunk; some of them were emaciated by in

sufficient food-a penny loaf a day was doled out to those who had no money and no friends. That was, actually, all the poor wretches had to keep body and soul together; the place was crowded, not only with the prisoners, but with their friends and relations of both sexes; the noise, the cursings, the ribald laugh, the drunken song, the fighting and quarrelling can never be imagined. And in the narrow space of the yard, which is so like the bottom of a deep well, there is no air moving, so that the stench is enough, at first, to make a horse sick.

I can liken it to nothing but a sty too narrow for the swine that crowded it; so full of unclean beasts was it, so full of noise and pushing and quarrelling; so full of passions, jealousies and suspicions ungoverned, was it. Or I would liken it to a chamber in hell, where the sharp agony of physical suffering is, for a while, changed for the equal pains of such companionship and discourse as those of the common side. I stood near the door as the turnkey had pushed me in, staring stupidly about. Some sat on the stone bench with tobacco-pipes and pots of beer; some played cards on the bench; some walked about. There were women visitors, but not one whose face showed shame or sorrow. To such people as these Newgate is like an occasional attack of sickness; a whipping is but one symptom of the disease; hanging is only the natural, common and inevitable end when the disease is incurable, just as death in his bed happens to a man with a fever.

While I looked about me a man stepped out of the crowd.

"Garnish!" he cried, holding out his hand. Then they all crowded round, crying, "Garnish! garnish!"

I held up my hands; I assured them that I was penniless. The man who had first spoken waved back the others with his hand.

"Friend," said he, "if you have no money, off with your coat."

Then I know not what happened, because I think I must have fallen into a kind of fit. When I recovered I was lying along the stone bench. My coat was gone; my waistcoat was gone; my shirt was in rags, my shoes-on which were silver buckles-were gone; and my stockings, which were of black silk. My head was in a woman's lap.

"Well done," she said; "I thought you'd come round. 'Twas the touching of the wound on your head. Brutes and beasts you are, all of you! all of you! One comfort is, you'll all be hanged, and that very soon. It'll be a happy world without you."

"Come, Nan," one of the men said, "you know it's the rule. If a gentleman won't pay his garnish he must give up his coat."

"Give up his coat! You've stripped him to the skin. And him with an open wound in his head bleeding again like a pig."

The people melted away; they offered no further apology; but the coat and the rest of the things were not returned.

My good Samaritan, to judge by her dress and appearance, was one of the commonest of common women-the wife or the mistress of a gaol-bird, the companion of thieves, the accomplice of villains. Yet there was left in her still, whatever the habit of her life, this touch of human kindness that made her come to the assistance of a helpless stranger. No Christian could have done more. "Forasmuch," said Christ, "as you did it unto one of these you did it unto Me." When I read these words I think of this poor woman, and I pray for her.

"Lie still a minute," she said, "I will staunch the bleeding with a little gin;" she pulled out a flat bottle. "It is good gin. I will pour a little on the wound. That can't hurt-so." But it did hurt.

"Now, my pretty gentleman, for you are a gentleman, though maybe only a gentleman rider and woundily in want of a wash. Take a sip for yourself; don't be afraid. Take a long sip. I brought it here for my man, but he's dead. He died in the night, after a fight in the yard here. He got a knife between his ribs." She spoke of this occurrence as if such a conclusion to a fight was quite in the common way. "Look here, sir, you've no business in this place. Haven't you got any friends to pay for the Master's side? Now, you're easier; the bleeding has stopped. Can you stand, do you think?”

I made a shift to get to my feet, shivering in the cold damp of the November air. She had a bundle lying on the bench.

""Tis my man's clothes," she said. "Take his coat and shoes. You must. Else with nothing but the boards to sleep upon you'll be starved to death. Now I must go and tell his friends that my man is dead. Well-he won't be hanged. I never did like to think that I should be the widow of a Tyburn bird."

She put on me the warm thick coat that had been her husband's; she put on his shoes. I was still stupid and dull of understanding. But I tried to thank her.

Some weeks afterwards, when I was at length released, I ventured back into the prison in hopes of finding the name and the residence of the womanSamaritan, if ever there was one. The turnkeys could tell me nothing. The gaol was full of women, they said. My friend was named Nan. They were all Nans. She was the wife of a prisoner who died in the place. They were always dying on the common side. That was nothing. They all knew each other by name; but it was six weeks ago; prisoners change every' day; they are brought in; they are sent out to be hanged, pilloried, whipped, or transported. In a word, they knew nothing, and would not take the time to inquire. What did it matter to these men, made callous by intimacy with suffering, that a woman of the lower kind had done a kind and charitable action? Nevertheless, we have Christ's own assurance-His words-His promise. The woman's action will be remembered on the day when her sins shall be passed before a merciful Judge. Her sins! Alas! she was what she was brought up to be; her sins lie upon the head of those who suffer her, and those like her, to grow up without religion, or virtue, or example, or admonition.

dudgeon. Remembering Talleyrand's advice, I therefore gathered up all my courage and simply replied:

"The restitution of my family property."

The great man seemed decidedly taken aback by this laconic answer. He threw up his head with a quite peculiar movement, turning it a little aside, so that I saw his face almost in profile. He frowned and stuck out his underlip.

"Of a truth, madame, I cannot complain that you are too prolix-but," and he raised his voice to an angry pitch, "why are you staring at me so strangely? I would have you remember, madame, that I am the head of the State, and, as such, demand to be treated with proper respect."

But his tone of angry annoyance had no terrors for me now.

As he threw up his head and frowned and stuck out his underlip, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes, the veil woven by the busy years was rent asunder, and I suddenly knew where and when this man had played a part in my former life.

I came a little closer to the All-Powerful Consul, who was kicking his foot impatiently against the fender, awaiting some reply from me, and, touching his arm, I said, with a smile: "Monsieur le Consul, will you permit me to tell you a little story?"

Oh, you should have seen his face, dearest! I am sure he must have thought I was quite mad for daring to lay my hand on his arm, and also because his harsh manner only called forth a smile from me.

"Out with it, then!" he thundered, stepping back from me, "but waste as few words as possible over it, if you please." And once more he fixed me with a searching look, obviously uncertain if I were in my right mind.

So I began in a low voice (I never told you this story, dearest Annaliebe):

"It was on an evening in July, in the year 1783, and I was on a visit to Mademoiselle Laure Permon, the daughter of the Finance Minister Charles Permon and the Princess Comméene of Corsica, who had a beautiful villa near Brienne in the Champagne. I had wandered away by myself into the fields to pluck flowers and was so absorbed in my occupation that I never noticed a large herd of cattle grazing close by. I was nearly seventeen, but a severe illness in my childhood had left me small and weakly for my age-"

"If you intend giving me an account of your life's history, madame," the Consul broke in, roughly, "I may as well say at once that I have neither time nor inclination to listen to it."

"Pardon me, Monsieur le Consul," I returned, "I am coming now to the point of my story. I had gathered a large nosegay," I went on, "when I suddenly heard an infuriated bellow behind me, and, turning round, saw, to my horror, that an enormous black bull, irritated, perhaps, by my red parasol, was bearing down upon me with blazing eyes and lowered horns.

"I gave one piercing shriek of terror, dropped my flowers and fled, as fast as my feet would carry me, towards the high road. But the bull rushed after me; I could hear his snorting breath. 'Help! Help!' I screamed as loud as I was able. A voice answered, and the next moment a pale-faced boy, in the uniform of the Brienne cadets, came running towards me. He waved his sword and rushed at the bull from the side, trying to divert its attention to himself. But I entirely frustrated the boy's plan by flying to him for protection. He called out something to me, but I was too frightened to understand, and, in any case, it was too late now. The bull reached me, felled me to the ground, and I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes my preserver was supporting me with