than seven months the boys make their own clothing and boots. They are also instructed in carpentry in all its branches, and each boy takes his turn in kitchen-work.

It is in fact of vital importance in such institutions to engage and wisely direct the physical energies of youth. Give their hands something to do and you have won them. Their brains are often numb while their hands are alive with mischievous energy. Satan is sometimes unreasonably credited with "mischief for idle hands to do"; it should rather be for "irresistibly energetic hands." But what a poor But what a poor nerveless creature would the boy be without this irrepressible vitality, and how we-in our meridian-envy him its possession! The "mischief" is but energy misdirected, as dirt is matter misplaced. What may not the boy be taught of cunning skill and patient labour through his restless fingers!

Town lads are especially clever and ambitious and have plenty of talent; the treasure only needs discovery.

Mental energy is a natural sequence, and often the thirst for knowledge becomes almost incredible. In an English class of which I bad charge last winter at St. Andrew's Home for Working Boys in Westminster, one of my pupils, employed in a printing office from 8 a.m. till 7 p.m., never once missed his weekly attendance, trudging down to the Home in all weathers from Soho. He also belonged to the drawing-class, and, as I have since discovered, devotes half his daily dinner hour to a cracked violin of which he is the proud possessor, actually paying a musical friend to instruct him!

Gordon's religion was the whole Bible, not part of it; but no one would more readily have conceded that

"All paths unto the Father lead
When self the feet have spurn'd."

It is only natural, therefore, that an institution bearing his name should be absolutely unsectarian, and the boys

attend the churches of the different denominations to which they belong. The Executive of the Home consists at present of the commandant and his staff - officer, both retired officers of the army; a schoolmaster and assistant; three trades instructors -tailor, shoemaker, and carpenter; besides sergeant-instructors, who divide between them the general discipline and drill of the boys as well as the discharge of commissariat duties. As the institution increases it is intended that one such sergeantinstructor shall have charge of each dormitory of forty boys and shall sleep there. Proper gymnastic training will also be carried out, while the dietary is ample even for growing lads.

A gift horse must not be too severely criticised, but the temporary Home is not quite all that can be desired. A fort is like a room lighted by a skylight-one cannot see out of it; and it must have been a most depressing residence for the lads during the long gloomy months that are past. How sadly they must have missed the glare and life of the streets, so dear to all London Arabs! The fledglings when first captured gave plenty of trouble. Acts of insubordination, disregard of rules, and unseemly conduct in church had especially to be combated. No punishment prevailed so much with the unruly as the consistent kindness shown the boys by the commandant and his staff-officer. To most of them it must have come like a revelation, and its novel influence soon penetrated the hard crust with which neglect and privation had hitherto environed their young lives. From earliest days, too, such boys are accustomed to make the best of a bad job, and, being before all things very adaptive, they soon settle down to make the best of a good one. Now they give comparatively little trouble. Their conduct, of course, is not entirely irreproachable; it would be indeed surprising if it were, and assuredly those who command such an institution can never be mere dilettante

workers, after a fashion too common in these days. By degrees the boys are more trusted and granted greater liberty, which they highly appreciate. Doubtless when the new home at Bagshot is completed the lives of both the boys and those in command will be much more cheerful. Thanks to the generous and anonymous gifts of 5,000l. by one lady and 1,000l. by another the buildings there will be at once begun. They will consist of a large central hall for meals and recreation, with rooms for reading and writing attached; on either side there will be a two-storied block of dormitories, each constructed for two sergeants and eighty boys. These buildings are connected by walls and form the south side of a square, the north being occupied by a range of kitchens, stoves, school-rooms and workshops. There will also be two dwelling-houses for the commandant and his staffofficer. The plans, which have been prepared by Mr. Butterfield, admit of expansion, but for the present sufficient accommodation will be provided for only just as many boys as the funds at the disposal of the trustees warrant.

What with schooling, drill, and the various trades, the boys have plenty of occupation. Strangely enough their hours of recreation are more difficult of direction. Combination for the pursuit of pleasure seemed at first unknown, and, though they gained a praiseworthy victory over a local Fareham team at football by dint of good hard kicking, the game was not popular. Town boys, in fact, are not gregarious in amusement. They are to be seen in the parks and alleys, in knots of twos and threes, playing intricate games with much gusto, such scant materials as their own caps and an indifferent ball sufficing. Cricket, however, has been warmly adopted at Fort Wallington, and the roughness and acute slope of the ground-or glacis, strictly speakingdoes not seem in the least to interfere with the boys' enjoyment. A recreation room with games and newspapers

has been started-the most popular institution in the Home-and the management is entrusted to a Committee of the boys themselves. It is hoped that a library will soon be formed.

If the moral at all keeps pace with the physical development of the Gordon boys the happiest results must follow. As a member of the Home Committee in London it was often my duty to see and to inquire into the cases of the various applicants for admission. I found great difficulty in recognising these same lads when I paid them a visit at Fort Wallington a few weeks later. Regular food and hours and discipline, and the neat uniform of blue patrol jacket and trowsers of Gordon tartan worn on parade, had altered them wonderfully. One of them, whom I had first known in less fortunate days earning a precarious livelihood as an irregular attaché to the great Shoe-Black Brigade, seemed particularly pleased with himself and his surroundings. When I asked him if he did not sometimes miss "the streets," he replied, somewhat inconsequently, "No sir, 'cos I never misses my dinner now." But however happy the boys may be at Fort Wallington it is delightful to learn that their family affection is not chilled. One little lad wrote to his mother that "his good dinner choked him when he thought of her starving at home."

Miss Gordon, who takes the deepest interest in the Home and its occupants, sent me a letter which she lately received from one of her nominees there. I subjoin it, as describing the impression that the life is making on the boys far better than any words of mine can :

"DEAR MISS GORDON,-I am very sorry that you ant answered my letter yet that you will send me one as quick as you can for I should like to hear from you. I hope you are in good health. We have had the cricket bats and stumps out on Last Thursday And all the boys likes to play with them. And the volunteers have come to Fort Nelson And we are going to have the review on Easter

Monday. Its getting very hot down here that I hope you had some buns on good Friday as we had none. All the boys are getting serge suits for days. We have got a room down here where one dormitory takes use of it every week we have got all sorts of games in it. We have also got the parrallel bars down here on which I amuse myself daily. I am getting on with my schooling Will you kindly send me a few stamps."

The connection between the hot weather and the buns is a little strained, but to draw attention to the deficiency was evidently the object uppermost in the writer's mind.

Here, too, is a letter I received a few days ago from one of the corporals.

"DEAR SIR,-I write these few lines to you to let you know I received the note you sent by the little boy Hodges. I will look after him as you asked me to; he is getting on very well at present. I spoke to the boys you told me to, and they all sends their best respects to you. I spoke to Ryan and he said he was very sorry that he had been in the defaulters' list, and he will try to be a good boy in future. Corporal Wilson has been to Portsmouth to have his eyes turned; they are getting better now, but they are very much bloodshot."

So far as its little span of life has run, this then is a brief sketch of the Gordon Boys' Home. It is a carrying out of Gordon's own work; a prolongation of a career cut short by death. We may, we feel, safely rejoice in the thought that it is a charity

which has firmly established itself in the hearts not only of the elders of this generation, but in those of its youthful members. It is a hopeful sign of the times that poverty is no longer a mark for scorn even among the boys of our great public schools. Many are the shillings which have been gladly contributed by them towards a recreation room for those hitherto without the bare necessaries of life; and certainly we may believe that the gifts have been not less blessed to the giver than the receiver. We cannot learn too early in life to consider the needs of those whom the mere accident of birth has surrounded with sorrow, and doomed to a future which, to all but the eye of faith, seems hopeless. Sympathy widens in proportion as it is brought into contact with suffering, and assuredly all pleasure palls before the joy of obedience to such humane instincts.

"Night enough is there

In yon dark city; get thee back
Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men,
And make thy gold thy vassal not thy
king,

And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl,
And send the day into the darken'd heart;
Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men,
A dying echo from a falling wall.'

ARTHUR COLLINS.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE encounter with the carriages having forced upon Winterborne's mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of South's death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copy holds for life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep them in order; though he was much struck with his father's negligence in not insuring South's life.

After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed, and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by the said lord. They had come into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South.

Pinned to the corner of one of the

indentures was a letter, which Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature the landholder's. It was to the effect that at any time before the last of the stated lives should drop Mr. Giles Winterborne senior, or his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward corner of the lane, and impeded the way.

The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles's father had not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son's lives it was impossible to say. In all likelihood death alone had hindered him in the execution of that project, the elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small way.

Since one of the Souths still survived there was not much doubt that Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life was concerned. This possibility cheered him much; for by those houses hung many things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's fitness to be the husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would run up to South's as he had intended

Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty," he said; and was surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined.

"I am sorry for your labour," she said. "It is all lost. He says the tree seems taller than ever."

Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.

"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this morning," she added. "He declares it will come down upon us and cleave us, like the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'

"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he.

"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down."

Mrs. Char

"Oh-you've had the doctor?” "I didn't send for him. mond before she left heard that father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense."

"That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose."

He went up stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away; and his eyes turned with its wavings.

They heard footsteps-a man's, but of a lighter weight than usual. "There is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs.

Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick chamber just as a doctor is more or less wont to do on such occasions, and preeminently when the room is that of the humble cottager; looking round towards the patient with that preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has well-nigh forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he dismissed them from his mind

ment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where South sat.

Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or of susceptivity-it was difficult to say which; it might have been a little of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether his apparent depth of vision were real, or only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal.

His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than flushed ; his nose-if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions-was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over busy, and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy —an effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was more finished and up to date than is usually the case among rural practitioners.

Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about him by report, said that he seemed likely to err rather in the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy 'ist of some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of 'ism. However this may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock.

"This is an extraordinary case," he