sounds below. The carts and gigs rolled away; the clatter of hoofs on the road ceased; there was then a dumb dull sound as of locking-up, and low humming voices below, and footsteps mounting the stairs to bed, with now and then a drunken hiccup or maudlin laugh, as some conquered votary of Bacchus was fairly carried up to his domicile.

All, then, at last was silent, just as the clock from the church sounded the stroke of eleven.

He

Leonard, meanwhile, had been looking over his MSS. There was first a project for an improvement on the steam-engine-a project that had long lain in his mind, begun with the first knowledge of mechanics that he had gleaned from his purchases of the Tinker. He put that aside now-it required too great an effort of the reasoning faculty to re-examine. glanced less hastily over a collection of essays on various subjects, some that he thought indifferent, some that he thought good. He then lingered over a collection of verses, written in his best hand with loving care-verses first inspired by his perusal of Nora's melancholy memorials. These verses were as a diary of his heart and his fancy-those deep unwitnessed struggles which the boyhood of all more thoughtful natures has passed in its bright yet mirky storm of the cloud and the lightning flash; though but few boys pause to record the crisis from which slowly emerges Man. And these first desultory grapplings with the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain, had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the Immaterial seized, and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt that there at length spoke forth the Poet. It was a work which, though as yet but half completed, came from a strong hand; not that shadow trembling on unsteady

waters, which is but the pale reflex and imitation of some bright mind, sphered out of reach and afar; but an original substance-a life-a thing of the Creative Faculty-breathing back already the breath it had received. This work had paused during Leonard's residence with Mr Avenel, or had only now and then, in stealth, and at night, received a rare touch. Now, as with a fresh eye, he reperused it; and with that strange, innocent admiration, not of self-(for a man's work is not, alas! himselfit is the beatified and idealised essence, extracted he knows not how from his own human elements of clay)

admiration known but to poetstheir purest delight, often their sole reward. And then, with a warmer and more earthly beat of his full heart, he rushed in fancy to the Great City, where all rivers of Fame meet, but not to be merged and lost-sallying forth again, individualised and separate, to flow through that one vast Thought of God which we call THE WORLD.

He put up his papers; and opened his window, as was his ordinary custom, before he retired to rest-for he had many odd habits; and he loved to look out into the night when he prayed. His soul seemed to escape from the body-to mount on the airto gain more rapid access to the far Throne in the Infinite-when his breath went forth among the winds, and his eyes rested fixed on the stars, of Heaven.

So the boy prayed silently; and after his prayer he was about lingeringly to close the lattice, when he heard distinctly sobs close at hand. He paused, and held his breath; then looked gently out; the casement next his own was also open. Some one was also at watch by that casementperhaps also praying. He listened yet more intently, and caught, soft and low, the words, "Father-father do you hear me now?"

Leonard opened his door and stole towards that of the room adjoining; for his first natural impulse had been to enter and console. But when his

touch was on the handle, he drew back. Child though the mourner was, her sorrows were rendered yet more sacred from intrusion by her sex.

Something, he knew not what, in his young ignorance, withheld him from the threshold. To have crossed it then would have seemed to him profanation. So he returned, and for hours yet he occasionally heard the sobs, till they died away, and childhood wept itself to sleep.

But the next morning, when he heard his neighbour astir, he knocked gently at her door: there was no answer. He entered softly, and saw her seated very listlessly in the centre of the room-as if it had no familiar nook or corner as the rooms of home have her hands drooping on her lap, and her eyes gazing desolately on the floor. Then he approached and spoke to her.

Helen was very subdued, and very silent. Her tears seemed dried up; and it was long before she gave sign or token that she heeded him. At length, however, he gradually succeeded in rousing her interest; and the first symptom of his success was in the quiver of her lip, and the overflow of the downcast eyes.

By little and little he wormed himself into her confidence; and she told him, in broken whispers, her simple story. But what moved him the most was, that, beyond her sense of loneliness, she did not seem to feel her own unprotected state. She mourned the object she had nursed, and heeded, and cherished; for she had been rather the protectress than the protected to the helpless dead. He could not gain from her any more satisfactory information than the landlady had already imparted, as to her friends and prospects; but she permitted him passively to look among the effects her father had left-save only that if his hand touched something that seemed to her associations especially holy, she waved him back, or drew it quickly away. There were many bills receipted in the name of Captain Digby-old yellow faded music-scores for the flute-extracts of Parts from Prompt Books-gay parts of lively comedies, in which heroes have so noble a contempt

for money-fit heroes for a Sheridan and a Farquhar;-close by these were several pawnbrokers' tickets; and, not arrayed smoothly, but crumpled up, as if with an indignant nervous clutch of the old helpless hands, some two or three letters. He asked Helen's permission to glance at these, for they might give a clue to friends. Helen gave the permission by a silent bend of the head. The letters, however, were but short and freezing answers from what appeared to be distant connections or former friends, or persons to whom the deceased had applied for some situation. They were all very disheartening in their tone. Leonard next endeavoured to refresh Helen's memory as to the name of the nobleman which had been last on her father's lips; but there he failed wholly. For it may be remembered that Lord L'Estrange, when he pressed his loan on Mr Digby, and subsequently told that gentleman to address to him at Mr Egerton's, had, from a natural delicacy, sent the child on, that she might not hear the charity bestowed on the father; and Helen said truly, that Mr Digby had sunk into a habitual silence on all his affairs latterly. She might have heard her father mention the name, but she had not treasured it up; all she could say was, that she should know the stranger again if she met him, and his dog too. Seeing that the child had grown calm, Leonard was then going to leave the room, in order to confer with the hostess; when she rose suddenly though noiselessly, and put her little hand in his, as if to detain him. She did not say a word-the action said all-said, "Do not desert me." And Leonard's heart rushed to his lips, and he answered to the action, as he bent down and kissed her cheek, "Orphan, will you go with me? We have one Father yet to both of us, and He will guide us on earth. I am fatherless like you." She raised her eyes to his-looked at him long-and then leant her head confidingly on his strong young shoulder.

so young a companion; but Leonard, in his happy ignorance, had talked so sanguinely of finding out this lord, or some adequate protection for the child; and in so grand a strain, though with all sincerity-had spoken of his own great prospects in the metropolis, (he did not say what they were!)that had he been the craftiest impostor he could not more have taken in the rustic host. And while the landlady still cherished the illusive fancy, that all gentlefolks must know each other in London, as they did in a county, the landlord believed, at least, that a young man so respectably dressed, although but a foot-traveller-who talked in so confident a tone, and who was so willing to undertake what might be rather a burthensome charge, unless he saw how to rid himself of it-would be sure to have friends, older and wiser than himself, who would judge what could best be done for the orphan.

And what was the host to do with her? Better this volunteered escort, at least, than vaguely passing her on from parish to parish, and leaving her friendless at last in the streets of London. Helen, too, smiled for the first time on being asked her wishes, and again put her hand in Leonard's. In short, so it was settled.

The little girl made up a bundle of the things she most prized or needed. Leonard did not feel the additional load, as he slung it to his knapsack: the rest of the luggage was to be sent to London as soon as Leonard wrote, (which he promised to do soon,) and gave an address.

Helen paid her last visit to the churchyard; and she joined her companion as he stood on the road, with out the solemn precincts. And now they had gone on some hours; and when he asked if she were tired, she still answered "No." But Leonard was merciful, and made their day's journey short; and it took them some days to reach London. By the long lonely way, they grew so intimate; at the end of the second day, they called each other brother and sister; and Leonard, to his delight, found that as her grief, with the bodily movement and the change of scene, subsided from its first intenseness

and its insensibility to other impressions, she developed a quickness of comprehension far beyond her years. Poor child! that had been forced upon her by Necessity. And she understood him in his spiritual consolations,

half poetical, half religious; and she listened to his own tale, and the story of his self-education and solitary struggles-those, too, she understood. But when he burst out with his enthusiasm, his glorious hopes, his confidence in the fate before them, then she would shake her head very quietly and very sadly. Did she comprehend them? Alas! perhaps too well. She knew more as to real life than he did. Leonard was at first their joint treasurer; but before the second day was over, Helen seemed to discover that he was too lavish; and she told him so, with a prudent grave look, putting her hand on his arm as he was about to enter an inu to dine; and the gravity would have been comic, but that the eyes through their moisture were so meek and grateful. felt he was about to incur that ruinous extravagance on her account. Somehow or other, the purse found its way into her keeping, and then she looked proud and in her natural element.

She

Ah! what happy meals under her care were provided so much more enjoyable than in dull, sanded inn parlours, swarming with flies and reeking with stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue jug which she had bought on the road-the last filled with new milk; the first with new bread and some special dainty in radishes or water-cresses. And she had such a talent for finding out the prettiest spot whereon to halt and dine: sometimes in the heart of a wood-so still, it was like a forest in fairy tales, the hare stealing through the alleys, or the squirrel peeping at them from the boughs; sometimes by a little brawling stream, with the fishes seen under the clear wave, and shooting round the crumbs thrown to them. They made an Arcadia of the dull road up to their dread Thermopyla-the war against

the million that waited them on the other side of their pass through Tempe.

"Shall we be as happy when we

are great?" said Leonard, in his grand simplicity.

Helen sighed, and the wise little head was shaken.

At last they came within easy reach of London; but Leonard had resolved not to enter the metropolis fatigued and exhausted, as a wanderer needing refuge, but fresh and elate, as a conqueror coming in triumph to take possession of the capital. Therefore they halted early in the evening of the day preceding this imperial entry, about six miles from the metropolis, in the neighbourhood of Ealing, (for by that route lay their way.) They were not tired on arriving at their inn. The weather was singularly lovely, with that combination of softness and brilliancy which is only known to the rare true summer days of England: all below so green, above so blue-days of which we have about six in the year, and recall vaguely when we read of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, of Dainsel and Knight, in Spenser's golden Summer Song, or of Jacques, dropped under the oak tree, watching the deer amidst the dells of Ardennes. So, after a little pause in their inn, they strolled forth, not for travel but pleasure, towards the cool of sunset, passing by the grounds that once belonged to the Duke of Kent, and catching a glimpse of the shrubs and lawns of that beautiful domain through the lodge-gates; then they crossed into some fields, and came to a little rivulet called the Brent. Helen had been more sad that day than on any during their journey. Perhaps because, on approaching London, the memory of her father became more vivid; perhaps from her precocious knowledge of life, and her foreboding of what was to befall them, children that they both were. But Leonard was selfish that day; he could not be influenced by his companion's sorrow, he was so full of his own sense of being, and he already caught from the atmosphere the fever that belongs to anxious Capitals.

"Sit here, sister," said he imperiously, throwing himself under the

shade of a pollard tree that overhung the winding brook, "sit here and talk."

He flung off his hat, tossed back his rich curls, and sprinkled his brow from the stream that eddied round the roots of the tree that bulged out, bald and gnarled, from the bank, and delved into the waves below. Helen quietly obeyed him, and nestled close to his side.

"And so this London is really very vast?-VERY?" he repeated inquisitively.

"Very," answered Helen, as abstractedly she plucked the cowslips near her, and let them fall into the running waters. "See how the flowers are carried down the stream! They are lost now. London is to us what the river is to the flowers-very vast-very strong;" and she added, after a pause, 66 very cruel!"

"Cruel! Ah, it has been so to you; but now!-now I will take care of you!" he smiled triumphantly; and his smile was beautiful both in its pride and its kindness. It is astonishing how Leonard had altered since he had left his uncle's. He was both younger and older; for the sense of genius, when it snaps its shackles, makes us both older and wiser as to the world it soars to-younger and blinder as to the world it springs from.

"And it is not a very handsome city either, you say?"

Very ugly, indeed," said Helen, with some fervour; "at least all I have seen of it."

"But there must be parts that are prettier than others? You say there are parks; why should not we lodge near them, and look upon the green trees?"

"That would be nice," said Helen, almost joyously; "but-" and here the head was shaken-" there are no lodgings for us except in courts and alleys."

66

Why?"

"Why?" echoed Helen, with a smile, and she held up the purse.

"Pooh! always that horrid purse; as if, too, we were not going to fill it. Did not I tell you the story of Fortunio? Well, at all events, we will go first to the neighbourhood where you last lived, and learn there all we can; and then the day after to-morrow, I will see this Dr Morgan, and find out the Lord-"

The tears started to Helen's soft eyes. "You want to get rid of me soon, brother."

"I! ah, I feel so happy to have you with me, it seems to me as if I had pined for you all my life, and you had come at last; for I never had brother, nor sister, nor any one to love, that was not older than myself, except-"

Except the young lady you told me of," said Helen, turning away her face; for children are very jealous.

"Yes, I loved her, love her still. But that was different," said Leonard, with a heightened colour. "I could never have talked to her as to you: to you I open my whole heart; you are my little Muse, Helen. I confess to you my wild whims and fancies as frankly as if I were writing poetry." As he said this, a step was heard, and a shadow fell over the stream. A belated angler appeared on the margin, drawing his line impatiently across the water, as if to worry some dozing fish into a bite before it finally settled itself for the night. Absorbed in his occupation, the angler did not observe the young persons on the sward under the tree, and he halted there, close upon them.

"Curse that perch!" said he aloud. "Take care, sir," cried Leonard; for the man, in stepping back, nearly trod upon Helen.

The angler turned. "What's the matter? Hist! you have frightened my perch. Keep still, can't you?"

Helen drew herself out of the way, and Leonard remained motionless. He remembered Jackeymo, and felt a sympathy for the angler.

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"It is the most extraordinary perch, that!" muttered the stranger, soliloquising. "It has the devil's own luck. It must have been born with a silver spoon in its mouth, that damned perch! I shall never catch

Humph! are you intimately acquainted with this stream, sir?

No," answered Leonard. "I never saw it before."

ANGLER, (solemnly.)" Then, young man, take my advice, and do not give way to its fascinations. Sir, I am a martyr to this stream; it has been the Dalilah of my existence."

LEONARD, (interested, the last sentence seemed to him poetical.)—"The Dalilah! Sir, the Dalilah !"

ANGLER.- "The Dalilah. Young man, listen, and be warned by example. When I was about your age, I first came to this stream to fish. Sir, on that fatal day, about 3 P. M., I hooked up a fish-such a big one, it must have weighed a pound and a half. Sir, it was that length;" and the angler put finger to wrist. "And just when I had got it nearly ashore, by the very place where you are sitting, on that shelving bank, young man, the line broke, and the perch twisted himself among those roots, and-caco-dæmon that he was-ran off, hook and all. Well, that fish haunted me; never before had I seen such a fish. Minnows I had caught in the Thames and elsewhere, also gudgeons, and occasionally a dace. But a fish like that a PERCH

all his fins up, like the sails of a man-of-war- a monster perch-a whale of a perch !—No, never till then had I known what leviathans lie hid within the deeps. I could not sleep till I had returned; and again, sir,—I caught that perch. And this time I pulled him fairly out of the water. He escaped; and how did he escape? Sir, he left his eye behind him on the hook. Years, long years, have passed since then; but never shall I forget the agony of that moment."

LEONARD.- "To the perch, sir?" ANGLER." Perch! agony to him! He enjoyed it:-agony to me. I gazed on that eye, and the eye looked as sly and as wicked as if it was laughing in my face. Well, sir, I had heard that there is no better bait for a perch than a perch's eye. I adjusted that