The mayor's children-I knew them all by sight, though nothing more; for their father was a lawyer, and mine a tanner they belonged to Abbey folk and orthodoxy, I to the Society of Friends-the mayor's rosy children seemed greatly amused by watching us shivering shelterers from the rain. Doubtless our position made their own appear all the pleasanter. For myself, it mattered little; but for this poor, desolate, homeless, way-faring lad to stand in sight of their merry nursery-window, and hear the clatter of voices, and of not unwelcome dinner-sounds-I wondered how he felt it. Just at this moment another head came to the window, a somewhat older child; I had met her with the rest; she was only a visitor. She looked at us, then disappeared. Soon after, we saw the front door half opened, and an evi dent struggle taking place behind it; we even heard loud words across the narrow street.

"I will-I say I will."

"You shan't, Miss Ursula." "But I will!"

And there stood the little girl, with a loaf in one hand, and a carving-knife in the other. She succeeded in cutting off a large slice, and holding it out.

"Take it, poor boy!-you look so hungry. Do take it.” But the servant forced her in, and the door was shut upon a sharp cry.

It made John Halifax start, and look up at the nursery window, which was likewise closed. We heard nothing more. After a minute, he crossed the street, and picked up the slice of bread. Now, in those days bread was precious, exceedingly. The poor folk rarely got it; they lived on rye or meal. John Halifax had probably not tasted wheaten bread like this for months; it appeared not, he eyed it so ravenously; then glancing towards the shut door, his mind seemed to change. He was a long time before he ate a morsel; when he did so, it was quietly and slowly; looking very thoughtful all the while.

As soon as the rain ceased, we took our way home, down the High Street, toward the Abbey-church-he guiding my carriage along in silence. I wished he would talk, and let me hear again his pleasant Cornish accent.

"How strong you are!" said I sighing, when, with a sudden pull, he had saved me from being overturned by a

horseman riding past-young Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, who never cared where he galloped or whom he hurt-"So tall and so strong."

"Am I? Well, I shall want my strength "

"How ?"

"To earn my living."

He drew up his broad shoulders, and planted on the pavement a firmer foot, as if he knew he had the world before him-would meet it single-handed, and without fear. "What have you worked at lately ?"

te Anything I could get, for I have never learned a trade.” 66 Would you like to learn one ?"

He hesitated a minute, as if weighing his speech "Once, I thought I should like to be what my father was.” "What was he?"

"A scholar and a gentleman."

This was news, though it did not much surprise me. My father, tanner as he was, and pertinaciously jealous of the dignity of trade, yet held strongly the common-sense doctrine of the advantages of good descent; at least, in degree. For since it is a law of nature, admitting only rare exceptions, that the qualities of the ancestors should be transmitted to the race-the fact seems patent enough, that even allowing equal advantages, a gentleman's son has more chances of growing up a gentleman than the son of a working man. And though he himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still, I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of our forefathers, not unknown-Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple Island."

Thus it seemed to me, and I doubted not it would to my father, much more reasonable and natural, that a boy like John Halifax-in whom from every word he said I detected a mind and breeding above his outward condition-should come of gentle rather than of boorish blood.

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Then, perhaps," I said, resuming the conversation, you would not like to follow a trade ?"

"Yes, I should. What would it matter to me? My father was a gentleman."

"And your mother ?"

And he turned suddenly round; his cheeks hot, his lips

quivering She is dead. I do not like to hear strangers speak about my mother."

1 asked his pardon. It was plain he had loved and mourned her; and that circumstances had smothered down his quick boyish feelings into a man's tenacity of betraying where he had loved and mourned.-I, only a few minutes after, said something about wishing we were not "strangers." "Do you?" The lad's half-amazed, half-grateful smil vent right to my heart.

"Have you been up and down the country much?"

"A great deal these last three years; doing a hand's turn, as best I could, in hop-picking, apple-gathering, harvesting; only this summer I had typhus fever, and could not work."

"What did you do then!"

"I lay in a barn till I got well.-I am quite well now, you need not be afraid."

"No, indeed; I never thought of that."

We soon became quite sociable together. He guided me carefully out of the town into the abbey walk, flecked with sunshine through overhanging trees. Once he stopped to pick up for me the large brown fan of a horse-chestnut leaf.

"It's pretty, isn't it-only it shows that autumn is come." "And how shall you live in the winter, when there is no out-of-door work to be had ?"

"I don't know."

The lad's countenance fell, and that hungry, weary look, which had vanished while we talked, returned more painfully than ever. I reproached myself for having, under the influence of his merry talk, temporarily forgotten it.

"Ah!" I cried eagerly, when we left the shade of the abbey trees, and crossed the street; "here we are, at home!" "Are you?" The homeless lad just glanced at it-the flight of spotless stone steps, guarded by ponderous rail ings, which led to my father's respectable and handsome door. "Good day, then, which means good-bye."

I started. The word pained me. On my sad, lonely life brief indeed, though ill health seemed to have doubled and trebled my sixteen years into a mournful maturitythis lad's face had come like a flash of sunshine; a reflectior. of the merry boyhood, the youth and strength that never

were, never could be mine. To let it go from me was like going back into the dark.

"Not good-bye just yet!" said I, trying painfully to dis engage myself from my little carriage, and mount the steps. John Halifax came to my aid.

"Suppose you let me carry you. I could-and-andit would be great fun, you know."

He tried to turn it into a jest, so as not to hurt me; but the tremble in his voice was as tender as any woman's—~ tenderer than any woman's I ever was used to hear. I put my arms round his neck; he lifted me safely and carefully, and set me at my own door. Then, with another goodbye, he again turned to go.

I

My heart cried after him with an irrepressible cry. What I said I do not remember, but it caused him to return. "Is there anything more I can do for you, sir?” "Don't call me 'sir;' I am only a boy like yourself. want you; don't go yet. Ah! here comes my father!" John Halifax stood aside, and touched his cap with a respectful deference, as the old man passed.

So here thee be-hast thou taken care of my son? Did he give thee thy groat, my lad ?"

We had neither of us once thought of the money. When I acknowledged this, my father laughed, called John an honest lad, and began searching in his pocket for some larger coin. I ventured to draw his ear down, and whisper something-but I got no answer; meanwhile, John Halifax, for the third time, was going away.

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Stop, lad-I forgot thy name-here is thy groat, and a shilling added, for being kind to my son."

"Thank you, but I don't want payment for kindness." He kept the groat, and put back the shilling into my father's hand.

"Eh!" said the old man, much astonished, "thee'rt an odd lad; but I can't stay talking with thee. Come in to dinner, Phineas.-I say," turning back to John Halifax with a sudden thought, "art thee hungry ?"

"Very hungry." Nature gave way at last, and great tears came into the poor lad's eyes. "Nearly starving." "Bless me! then get in, and have thy dinner. But first -" and my inexorable father held him by the shoulder "thee art a decent lad, come of decent parents ?"

"Yes," almost indignantly.
Thee works for thy living?"
"I do whenever I can get it."
"Thee hast never been in gaol ?"

"No!" thundered out the lad, with a furious look, "1 don't want your dinner, sir; I would have stayed, becaus your son asked me, and he was civil to me, and I liked him Now, I think I had better go. Good day, sir."

There is a verse in a very old Book-even in its human stories the most pathetic of all books-which runs thus: "And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

And this day, I, a poorer and more helpless Jonathan, had found my David.

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I caught him by the hand, and would not let him go. There, get in, lads-make no more ado," said Abel Fletcher, sharply, as he disappeared.

So, still holding my David fast, I brought him into my father's house.

CHAPTER II.

DINNER was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlor, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery as glass. Except the table, the sideboard, and the cuckoo clock, there was no other furniture.

I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard, I sent for John.

Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us, and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no indication of her sex in its softess and tenderness. There had evidently been wrath in he kitchen.

Phineas, the lad ha' got his dinner, and you mustn't Keep 'un long. I bean't going to let you knock yourself ur with looking after a beggar-boy"