one side, a row of windows let in the scorching sun of the midsummer day, and must equally have let in the searching cold of winter. Everything was mean and squalid and decayed, and the young ones were often ailing, complaining of sick-headaches and sore throats.

On this particular day the place was stifling; not a window was open-for the slightest puff of wind would have scattered the little discs of linen from before the workers-an intolerable blaze of sunshine was beating on the heads of the poor little girls who sat underneath them.

The workroom was presided over by a young woman, for whom a mere box was railed off near the door. The door, indeed, was open, but it opened at the end of one of the long passages, and the air which it supplied was neither fresh nor taintless. It was loaded at present with a strong smell as of boiling glue. The young forewoman was standing in her box, she stood there most of the day, for she, too, had a machine under her care, cutting out the seemingly innumerable little discs of linen with which she supplied the workers. These, as well as the steel rings on which they were stretched, she had to keep account of, and see the tale of buttons delivered at the close of the day. The reader may go through a little sum of arithmetic if so inclined, in order to understand the work she had to do.

It is afternoon, the midday meal has been disposed of. Some of the women, driven by that invisible slave-driver, necessity, whose lash is hunger, and whose bloodhounds are despair, had hardly quitted their seats, but eating their bread and cheese, washed down with cold tea or beer, had cleansed their hands and turned to their task again, causing their child helper to do the same. Even those who had taken the hour allowed had been at Tork for some time. There was little or no talking; but the constant creak of the presses and rattle of the moulds kept up a continual din.

To unaccustomed eyes the scene was painful and depressing. One would gladly have wanted buttons all one's life if that would have done any good; and substituted any changeful, cheerful toil for that horrible monotony.

She was very young, the forewoman, to judge from the slender figure that moved about in the box. She turned her face for a moment, and more than one pair of eyes had been straying in that direction and brightened as they caught a glimpse of it. And well may they brighten, it is such a lovely face. It is paler than is natural, though naturally pale, but so pure, so earnest, so loving.

Suddenly above the din a quick ear might catch a dull, heavy sound as of some one falling, and the one or two children who had been looking up to catch a glimpse of Miss Chapelle, stopped and pointed to the box, in which she had suddenly disappeared. As she could not be seen when sitting there, all might have

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gone on as usual, but one child stood up persistently and said she had fallen. The good-natured Irishwoman who had hired the child, rose from her work to pacify her and looked into the box.

"Yes, sure enough, she's fallen in a fit or something," she shouted at the top of her voice.

A commotion spread along the benches. All eyes were turned as the Irishwoman, young and powerful, lifted Nelly Chapelle into the middle of the floor.

"She's only fainted," raid the more callous; and turned to their work again.

"I never see death if she aint dead," said a thinfaced, dismal-looking woman who had risen also and was bending over her.

The little girl who was crying by this time, fairly boo-ooed at this.

"Hould your wisht, Polly," said the Irishwoman, "and get me some wather. Stay, I'll get it fasther meself.”

And gently laying down the head which she had been holding between her knees, she darted away, while Polly slipped her hands in between the fair cheek and the dirty floor.

Just then, having stayed chatting with the managing clerk to the last minute, Mr. Harry Palmer had left the counting-house, and was on his way to the back entrance, up one stair and down another. He was in the act of ascending nearly in the dark, when Bridget Sheenan, on her way from the court with a tin can full of water, dashed down upon him. Of course there was a collision and a splash.

"Confound you!" was called out lustily in the voice of Mr. Harry Palmer; but the exclamation seemed not to have that particular effect on the Irishwoman, who cried, "Oh, the precious wather!" and feeling that the can still contained enough for her purpose, darted on unheeding.

"Is the woman mad?" he shouted after her, angrily; for it is a considerable shock to the best of tempers to have a libation of cold water poured into one's shirt-front.

It was running into his pockets, and threatening to reduce certain crisp little sheets to pulp for the benefit of the Bank of England, as he followed Eridget's flying steps, and reached the workroom almost as soon as she.

Meantime the nearest window had been opened, one or two women kindly sweeping their heaps of linen into their laps, and several stood round the "young lady," as they called her, in real concern. They made way for Bridget, and then for the young master, who followed her with wrathful

looks.

A glance at the scene silenced him, however, for ho was essentially good-natured, and he stood looking on as Bridget bathed the brows of the prostrate girl and poured the water into her hands, little Polly all the while kneeling at her head, having stopped her crying in her earnestness of help. One stoopcd

down and unloosed the neck of the black alpaca dress which Nelly Chapelle always wore at her work, showing the slender white throat it covered. At length the eyelids began to quiver and the lips to move in sighs. Harry Palmer instinctively stood back, and she opened her eyes upon the women about her. After looking bewildered for a few moments, she recognised her position and knew that she had fainted.

the fire of passion to recast it and solidify it, and the fire rose now at the sight of that white flower of a woman lying there in what he would always call "that beastly place." He had, as has been said, a dislike to the work, and his dislike to the part of it which employed women was most intense. He disliked to enter their quarter, and seldom did so. He could not bear the drabbish look which most of them had, nor the spiritless, sickly children. And

little water."

The Irishwoman held the great black tin can to her lips. It did not look, and probably was not, over clean, and Harry Palmer exclaimed involuntarily, "I will get some."

She raised herself up at the words and turned her face towards the speaker. The dark-blue eyesthose rare blue eyes that brighten and darken, that sparkle as if with sunshine when they smile, and look so infinitely deep and sorrowful when they are sad, looked half dismayed, half appealing. What it was that took hold of Harry Palmer at that moment it would have been difficult to define. It was a passion of the purer sort. He did not do what it is falsely asserted no one does now-a-days, fall in love at first sight. Not that that was impossible to him; he had in him the great power of passion--whether for purifying and lifting up, or for defiling and casting down, was yet to be proved. There was mixed in him, as in other mortals, the gold and the silver, the iron and the clay, only the clay was of the stiffest, and the iron of a resolute will was wanting to work it up. It was a nature that needed

was the humanity in him which rebelled at their condition, while he had not the will, nor, as yet, perhaps the power to help them. It was a passion of pity that burst forth in him, mingled with that of admiration, which a sudden surprise of beauty awakens in minds gifted with the keen perception of loveliness.

He went and fetched the water, and in spite of Nelly's assurance that she was better and would resume her work, he insisted on sending for a cab, and on seeing her into it, asking her address to give to the cabman. Nelly gave her address, an obscure enough one, and Mr. Harry Palmer telling the cabman to drive to No 14, Elm Row, lifted his hat as the cab drove off, as he would have done to one of his sister's friends. And all that Nelly felt in acknowledgment of the kindness was a terrible consternation. All that she thought was, "What shall we do if I am out of work? He does not think me able for it," and she shrank into a corner white to the lips, and clasped her hands in an agony of apprehension. (To be continued.)

H

OW sweet the spring-time o' the year,

When baby-blossoms peep so shy;
How sweet the spring-time o' the year,
When on green-beaded boughs appear
Wee birds, heart full o' minstrelsy.

The baby-blossoms are so pure,
The little birds so full o' joy;
The buds so tender on the spray,
It seems as sin had fled away

And love alone found full employ.
The Summer hath a bolder voice,

And flowers open to the sun,
The trees are clothed in glorious green
Till scarce a branch or spray is seen,

And streams in golden glory run.
But all the tend'rer grace hath fled,

The fairest petals scattered lie, The worm destroys the greenest leaf,

The nest-reft birdie pines in grief,
It seems as sin were drawing nigh.
And Autumn from her lib'ral lap

Pours at our feet her ripened cheer;
But rends her garments all the while,
And tears commingle with her smile-
We feel as sin were very near.
Then Winter steals with ruthless hand,
And crushes every ling'ring bloom;
He stops the stream upon its way,
And flings a pall upon the day-
We feel as sin at last had come.

Sin and his grim companion come,

And then we bow our heads and weep; When lo! sweet Faith, with cheerful voice, Whispers, "Look up, rejoice! rejoice! They are not dead, they only sleep."

JOHN G. WATTS.

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THE

A STORY IN FIVE CHAPTERS.

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CHAPTER I.

INGING, singing, singing, everlastingly singing-there he goes, at it again; I wish some one would choke that fellow Patch. Confound the fellow! if only he'd screech, or howl, or holloa, or do anything but sing, I shouldn't mind, but to be always piping his tunes, I don't understand it," said Mr. Taps, John Patch's next-door neighbour; "and I don't like it; and I won't put up with it; and if John Patch thinks I will, why he'll soon find I won't, and the sooner I tackle him the better. Halloa, neighbour!"

(No answer.)

"Master Patch!" cried out Mrs. Taps, "my master's calling you;" and thought Mrs. Taps to herself, from experience, "when my master calls, folk had better come."

Now John Patch was at this particular moment so thoroughly engaged in singing, that he did not hear either Mr. or Mrs. Taps. He was going on, in fact, worse than ever he had done before; and what made Mr. Taps still more angry was the fact, that, as if singing was not bad enough, his neighbour was whistling too-running up and down the gamut, sometimes skipping notes, and then apparently making a hop, step, and jump to catch them again; so that it was quite plain that if John Patch had not gone out of his mind, Mr. Taps, his neighbour, soon would, and perhaps Mrs. Taps too; and perhaps their old, howling, snarling dog Jowler would do the same: and as Mr. Taps did not mean to go out of his mind for his neighbour Patch, nor that his wife should, nor his dog; nor, in a word, that they should put up with any inconvenience of any kind from him, he determined to put an end to all this sort of thing

at once.

"Here, wife!" cried Bill Taps, "give me that duster, and I'll cram it down that fellow's throat; if he won't stop of himself, I'll make him ;" and the angry man shouted out, "Patch, halloa there!" again. "I'll soon choke you," just as if it was a privilege on John Patch's part to come and be throttled then and there by his neighbour Taps.

"I'll pinch your windpipe for you," said the brewer's man-for such Mr. Taps was-and he got up to do something or other to his poor neighbour, what, we won't undertake to say.

But Bill Taps soon sat down again, for his wife said, "Well, if he aint coming! I hear his step on the flags, and I believe, as sure as I'm alive, he's skipping and jumping, and not walking at all.

There's no keeping that little man quiet; if he aint going with his tongue he is with his legs, and if he aint with his legs he is with his tongue." And much more might Mrs. Taps have added, but that their little neighbour now stood before them. "Did you call?" asked the little tailor. "I thought I heard some one say, Patch."

"So I should think you did,” replied Mr. Taps. "I think you heard two people say, Patch-my wife and I; and I think if you had been minding your business, you might have heard it more than once; and if you hadn't been kicking up such a confounded row, you might have heard something more too, mightn't he, wife ?" and the brewer's man gave a wink at the latter, as much as to say, "He does not know how near he was to having his windpipe pinched."

"Well, here I am," said Patch, "at your service, Mr. Taps. What do you want ?"

It took the brewer's man a full half minute to gulp down his wrath, and put himself into a suitable frame of mind for speaking with ordinary civility and decency; and when that time had expired, he had finished measuring his little neighbour up and down from head to foot, and could give comprehensible utterance to his views about him. A moment or two ago, the brewer's man would have commenced on the subject of his | neighbour's windpipe; but that important part of his subject, and of his poor neighbour's body, he now left for the last.

"So you're at my service, Mr. Patch; and you wish to know what I want, do you?"

"Exactly so," said the tailor.

"Then if you're at my service, you'll just stop singing and whistling, and jumping and skipping; and you'll keep yourself a deal more quiet than you do."

"Oh! but I can't fall in with that," said the tailor; for I'm at somebody else's service first, and He's told me to sing."

"And who may he be?" asked the brewer's man, shutting his big fist, "who are you going to mind before me? I suppose 'tis your landlord; if it is, mind you, I pay double the rent for my house that you do for yours, and if he is to get rid of one of us, 'twill be of you, not of me."

"Well," said the tailor, smiling, "'tis our landlord, and it isn't. "Tisn't Mr. Bedford, that's the 'tisn't-and it is our Lord and heavenly Father, that's the 'Tis. He's our Landlord, and body Lord, and every other kind of Lord; and he bade me sing."

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like singing?" asked the tailor, gathering courage from having already said so much.

"Whether I like it or no is no affair of yours, my little man; but one thing is certain, I don't like you to sing, and if you don't mind I'll pinch your windpipe for you; and now be off."

Little John Patch did as he was told, and as he went off his surly neighbour sent a curse after him, wishing that something or other would happen to stop his throat. "Ay, I do," said the angry man, "and the sooner the better; Idon't mind

who does it, or what it is, if it will only stop his breath." "Don't curse, said the

Bill,"

angry man's wife. "Curses, they say, are like fowls, they often come home to roost. We aint religious ourselves, but I'm told 'tis a dangerous thing to curse those who are; and you know that little Patch is said to be a good man. Those are hymns he's whistling and singing, for I know the tunes well-many's the time I heard them when I was a girl in the Sunday-school. If that little Patch is a good man, it aint for the like of us to give him a bad word. I don't care about pious folk, but I'm not for meddling with them; and the little man, small as he is, has a wife and three children. Now, Bill, you say that curse backward, that's the way to undo a curse, I've often heard my grandmother say that."

May I just ask you a question ?" said the little tailor, looking rather doubtfully at the big fist of the brewer's man.

"You may ask, if you like; but may be I won't answer it," said Mr. Taps.

"Well, then, when you keep your back door shut, can you hear me when I am in the garden ?" "No, I can't."

"And when you keep your up-stairs door shut, can you hear me when I am in the bedroom ?" "No, I don't know that I can."

"Well then, I'm sure my singing a bit need not trouble you so much, Mr. Taps. But don't you

"You and your grandmother may-" but whatever Mr. Taps was going to say about these two persons, he found there was no immediate necessity for proceeding further with it, for his wife, seeing that he was in very bad blood indeed, and was every moment getting worse, took herself off as quickly as she could. She was a wise woman; and it would save many hard words and blows, if some other wives would follow her example; and, under similar circumstances, act in like manner.