barn full of rats. The prowler feels he is suspected. Un- known as yet to the London police, he has no desire to inviie their scrutiny. He crosses the way; he falls back; he follows from afar. The policeman may yet turn away before the safer streets of the metropolis be gained. No; the cursed Incarna-. tion of Law, with eyes in its slim back, continues its slow stride at the heels of the unsuspicious Darrell. The more solitary defiles are already passed—now that dim lane, with its dead wall on one side. By the dead wall skulks the prowler; on the other side still walks the Law. Now—alas for the prowler!— shine out the thoroughfares, no longer dim nor deserted— Leicester Square, the Haymarket, Pall Mall, Carlton Gardens; Darrell is at his door. The policeman turns sharply round. There, at the corner near the learned Club-house, halts the tat- terdemalion. Toward the tatterdemalion the policeman now advances quickly. The tatterdemalion is quicker still—fled like a guilty thought.
Back—back—back into that maze of passages and courts— back to the mouth of that black alley. There he halts again. Look at him. He has arrived in London but that very night, after an absence of more than four years. He has arrived from the sea-side on foot; see, his shoes are worn into holes. He has not yet found a shelter for the night. He has been di- rected toward that quarter, thronged with adventurers, native and foreign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near that court, at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round, the policeman is baffled, the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the same gaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before—under the same gaslight, un- der the same stars. From some recess in his rags he draws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book—last relic of sprucer days—leather of dainty morocco, once elaborately tooled, patent springs, fairy lock, fit receptacle for bank-notes, billets- donx, memoranda of debts of honor, or pleasurable engage- ments. Now how worn, tarnished, greasy, rapscallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with what motley, unlovable contents— stale pawn-tickets of foreign moiits depiete, pledges never hence- forth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hieroglyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite pen- knife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatly set within their satin lappets. Ugly implements, indeed —a file, a gimlet, loaded dice. Pell-mell, with such more hid- eous and recent contents, dishonored evidences of gaudier sum- mer life—locks of ladies' hair, love-notes treasured mechanically
