At the extremity of a yew-tree alley, gloomy and tortuous, trimmed in the style of the lawns of Versailles, stood a large, square building, whose angles were hidden beneath a massive drapery of ivy. A little portico in the form of a semi-circle, and decorated with a double row of low, fluted columns, led to an iron door, over which was this inscription:

SILENTUM SEDES.

The dwarf, who by this time had attained nearly the ordinary stature of man, and whose flaming eyes had served me in place of a lantern during my walk, struck five blows upon the door with his clenched fist, which reverberated

as if they had been blows of iron. I began to shudder. I had a foreboding of something unexpected, mysterious-something more than I had sought at the outset.

Finally the door opened, and I found myself in a sort of temple, lighted at regular distances by torches resting upon pilasters of the purest Ionic, and of the most rigid simplicity. A mosaic with a black ground, upon which were inscribed sentences in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Syriac, covered the area of the building. Before me, several statues, larger than life, formed two distinct groups. Where was I? My anxious eye peered into the remote, dimly-lighted portions of the edifice in search of l'autre and the remnant of our cortége; I saw nothing to indicate a funeral oration or any funeral ceremonies; nothing, if we except, at the foot of a stone estrade, five little coffins, of different sizes, placed in a row upon slender trestles, which I had at first taken for ornaments in relief-a complement to the mosaic.

With the most business-like air imaginable, my ci-devant dwarf was at that moment busy placing a label on each of the little coffins. This completed, he returned to my side, and bending close to my ear, said in a low tone:

"Patience; your judges are deliberating!" My judges! *** I saw around me nothing but statues. I had supposed myself in a museum; was I before a tribunal—the tribunal des silencieux? Was not that the correct translation of silentum sedes?

I thought of old Egypt judging her dead. Minos, acus, and Rhadamanthus, of the Greek enfer, recurred to my mind. I believed I recognized them in the three tall, bronze images, which, seated upon a curule chair, in an interrogating attitude, occupied the upper portion of the estrade.

As if the enfer of our day had adopted trial by jury, twelve huge marble men, chosen from all ages, all countries, comprising a second group, seemed to assist them in their offices. Costumed in either the Greek or the Roman style, they held in their hands a lyre or a roll of papyrus-all in marble, understand; but this did not prevent their being coiffured in an ample peruke au Louis XIV. Their silence, their immobility, impressed me very singularly.

The only person endowed with motion in

that place, solemn even to rigidity, was the dwarf, the red man, the man with the glaring eyeballs. Constantly passing from one statue to another, sometimes frolicking, sometimes uttering a crafty cry, he appeared to me a sort of link between those grave personages whose thoughts no outward sign betrayed. He might, with good reason, pass as the clerk of that supreme court.

Seeing him thus active, living, working, I beckoned him to me; he ran immediately, sasoftened in my dislike towards him, and luting me with a very gracious grimace.

"Whom are they judging here?" I asked. "Yourself, master," replied he; "that is your literary merit. The object is to assign to you your proper place in this necropolis of the arts."

I breathed more freely. And yet, what could I hope from the indulgence of bronze judges and marble jurors? They would scarcely unbend themselves to the subterfuge of extenuating circumstances; but I counted upon their justice, and I called to mind the splendid, popular, universal ovation of which I had been the hero on the morning of that same day, and this remembrance reassured me.

"If that is the case," I replied, "if it is with me that they are occupied now, what do these five little coffins contain?"

"Yourself! at least your mind, divided into as many parts as you have cultivated different arts and sciences.'

And he pointed to the inscription placed on the lid of each of the little black coffins; I read in succession the following titles :-Poetry, History, Philosophy, The Drama, Romance.

I was astonished at first; then, upon reflec⚫ tion, I came to the conclusion that this mode of procedure was both methodical and ingenious, and I was congratulating myself upon this division, which could not but have the effect of enhancing the glory of an encyclopedical genius, such as mine had been, when the red man, already returned to his post, cried out in a harsh voice:-"Listen! listen!"

And, in the midst of a profound silence, which had been interrupted only by the few words we had interchanged, I heard issue from the marmorean lyres of the twelve jurymen an accord of dead and confused sounds more strange than harmonious.

Then the president of the tribunal, bronze as as he was, arose; the muscles of his face moved with a visible effort; several times his lips half parted, then closed, without emitting any sound; finally, he succeeded in articulating slowly this simple monosyllable :-"PSI !"

In an instant the torches were extinguished, darkness reigned throughout the whole apartment with the exception of the place where the little red man stood, whose eyeballs shot forth a palish light upon the five unequal sized boxes, which some men, of real flesh and blood this time, were carrying out.

I alone composed the escort, and I followed after l'autre thus parcelled, stupified with won

two, he was made head carpenter and foreman of the workshop, being a great favourite with his master as well. In fact, people said that as Mr. Elton was a widower, with no family, and few relations, he would most likely in time make Paul his partner. So the worldly prospects of Paul Dale were such as few men in his position could ever expect.

He was a strong, healthy young man, was Paul Dale-one of a class of men whom I am sorry to say are becoming rarer and rarer every day amongst the working population. Drink and dissipation, which have ruined the constitutions of so many foolish youths of the present day, were temptations to which he had at no period of his life fallen a victim. I do not mean to say, for a moment, that Paul was one of those would-be saints, like William Fenning, who think (at least, they say so) that the only chance of heaven is to avoid every pleasure (however simple and innocent it may be) in this dear old world. He liked his glass of ale after a hard day's work, as every healthy man should. He drank it because he knew it would do him good, and was far too wise, in his own way, to indulge too freely in that beverage, which, notwithstanding all the teetotallers say (and I respect their teaching, though I cannot, as a rule, agree with them), I think is one of the causes of an Englishman's bodily strength over that of most other nations. He liked his pipe (he never smoked before the evening), and used to say that strange good thoughts would come to him when smoking, which he would never have had otherwise; and at their social gatherings-harvest homes, country fetes, and such like-Paul was as fond of dancing, and could sing as good a song, as any man in Maybury.

If anyone has felt the least interest in the opening of this story, they will want to know why Paul Dale was leisurely walking through the bean and clover fields. To begin with, he

lived in that direction-lived alone with his now widowed mother down Green-lane, which was about a mile and a-half from Maybury. But he was not going direct home: he left Greenlane a long way behind, and hurried off towards the little hamlet called "Cherry-tree Dells" (some twenty or thirty cottages), which stood in a hollow surrounded by large cherry orchards, from which the place took its name. There is no secret in Paul's visit to the Dells: he was going to see Nellie Raymond.

Dear little Nellie! If you could have seen her-shy, pretty, half-child, half-woman, as she was-you would have envied Paul. Every man, woman, and child in Maybury loved Nellie. She was very small: if her form had not been so neat and graceful, you might have almost called her a dwarf. But such a favourite was Nellie; so loving and simple was she herself, that it would have been thought high treason, at least in Marybury, to have said anything that was

not in her favour.

From her childhood-from the days when she wore short dresses—she had been the pet and

plaything of everybody with the least remnant of a heart in the neighbourhood. At the village school (Paul went there too, and, I fear, often wasted (?) his time, after school-hours, in "seeing Nelly home") she was more spoilt than ever. She might learn her lessons or not, just as she liked, for none of the teachers had the heart to say a cross word to her; and they would have as soon thought of caning the vestrymen themselves all round, as of punishing that pretty dear, Nellie Raymond.

I fancy some extra strictly moral people reading this, and turning up the whites of their eyes at the enormous neglect of duty on the part of the school teachers; but, as a rule, they were anything but indulgent, being conventionally strict with the other children, and only made an exception to Nellie because-well, I suppose it seemed natural for them to do so. And one May morning, in the year of which I am writing, Nellie woke and found herself sixteen, and caine to the conclusion (as many girls have done before) that she must at least be something of a woman now, though, to see her childish face and still more childish ways, it was hard to believe anything of the kind. To tell the truth, no one, except Paul Dale and the other young men in the place, did believe it; and the old people treated her just as if she still wore short dresses, and had not seen her twelfth birthday, to say nothing of her sixteenth. But whatever doubts they may have had about her growing up, they all agreed in one thing, namely, that she was the prettiest and dearest girl ever seen in Maybury or anywhere else; and when they wanted to give some idea of anything very beautiful that they had seen, they just said it was nearly as pretty as "Nellie of the Dells," and were understood immediately.

It was still twilight when Paul reached half-open door of Mr. Raymond's cottage. The "Cherry-tree Dells," and entered through the old man was always glad to see Paul, and felt pleased to think that one day the strong arm of the young carpenter might protect his dear Nellie, when he was beside his wife in the churchyard. Nellie, who was sitting by the open window nursing a venerable-looking_tomcat, looked up, pleased, when Paul entered, just playfellow who had come to amuse her when she as a child might do at the appearance of some was thinking how to pass away the hours before bedtime.

"Here we are again, Paul!" said Mr. Raymond, who had once seen a pantomime at Muddlewell fair, and was so struck with the entrance speech of the clown that he made use of it at every available opportunity. "Here we are again; and very kind of you to come, Paul. If it were not for you young fellows coming down here, little society should I see; for I find a walk to Maybury terribly knocks me up now, especially in such hot weather as this."

"It's worth while coming here, if only for the walk itself," answered Paul, "The fields and country make a fellow quite fresh, after working

hard all day, to say nothing of the kind welcome he is sure of when he reaches the Dells."

"Come, sit down," said the old man, "and tell me what's going on in Maybury. I havn't heard any news for some days; for everyone has been too busy gathering in the harvest about here, to spare time to talk to an old fellow like me."

"And a fine harvest we have had," said Paul: "not a drop of rain all the time. We are going to have a thanksgiving-day in church next Sunday."

"And quite right too. Do you know, Paul, I think sometimes that, now-a-days, we have become so accustomed to the blessings of peace and plenty that we take such things as a matter of course, and forget to be thankful to Him who has given us these blessings."

Mr. Raymond and Paul sat down by the open door. Maybe, Paul would rather have been nearer to Nellie: he had scarcely spoken to her as yet. The happiness of being near her was almost too much for him at present. The old man brought out an old meerschaum pipe, which had been his ever since he was a young man beginning the world in gaiters and kneebreeches, and began to smoke. Paul followed his example; and Nellie seemed as if the venerable-looking tom-cat was the sole object of her thoughts. Somehow Nellie had become suddenly shy-quite an unusual thing for her, who had never had had any cause to be afraid of anybody.

"And how's Mr. Elton, Paul?" said Mr. Raymond.

"He's away on business; and I don't expect him back for a few days. To tell the truth, I hardly liked leaving the place to-night, with no one sleeping there but the deaf old housekeeper.

"But no one would rob Mr. Elton down here: he is too great a friend of the poor for that." "At all events, I have no fear of anyone entering through the workshop. There is only one key to the door, which I have in my pocket; and I will defy any thief to pick the lock, which is a patent we had all the way from London."

"I suppose there is not anything of much value in the place ?"

"Well, to-night it happens there is. We were paid £31 17s. 6d. to-day, and after the bank was closed too; but I locked up the money safely in a drawer in Mr. Elton's private room; and as no one saw me do it but one or two of my fellow-workmen, whom I could trust with anything, I have no fear of a robbery on that account."

Mr. Raymond was in a particularly talkative mood that evening. He smoked several pipes in succession, and then went out to fetch a jug of ale, which he had himself brewed last October. Paul was left alone with Nellie. As she sat there by the open window, with the light from the harvest moon falling on her long hair and childish face, she looked almost like an inhabitant of some other world; and Paul, matter.

of-fact as he was, seemed under some fairy spell as he gazed upon her-a spell which would be broken as soon as he talked of earthly things. But it was impossible to be silent; so the spell was broken.

"We are going to have a sort of flower-show to-morrow in the Manor House Gardens," he said, at last. "It has been got up entirely by working people; and Lord Denbigh has kindly given us the use of his grounds. My mother has been very busy for the last few weeks, in rearing some flowers to add to the collection. Would you like to go, Nellie ?"

"Yes, Paul, if father would let me."

"O, he is sure to; and you will go with me, won't you? We leave off work early to-morrow, being Saturday; so we can go in the afternoon, and you will get back long before it is dark. Are you fond of flowers, Nellie?"

"Yes, I am very fond of them. We have a great many here, but not half so many as I could wish. I should like to have the room full of flowers: it would look so nice."

"I wish I had known that before-I could

often bring you some. What flowers do you

like best?"

How could Nellie answer such a question, when she dearly loved every flower she had seen, and longed for those of which she had only heard the names? But she was spared the trouble of making up her mind on such an important subject; for her father came back with the jug of old October, his face beaming with content and happiness.

"Here we are again!" he said. "I think you will find this ale better than any they sell at the Blue Dragon.' There's no adulteration here you might drink almost any quantity without its getting into your head."

"I would rather not try, Mr. Raymond," said Paul, laughing.

And the old man, thinking he had said something very funny, laughed hilariously.

They sat down again. The old man re-filled his pipe; and somehow the time passed so quickly that the church clock was heard striking nine in the distance, before they had the least idea that it was so late; and nine o'clock was considered very late at "Cherry-tree Dells." Even at Maybury few houses had lights in their windows after ten, except the "Blue Dragon," which generally kept open as late as the law would permit.

"I must go now," said Paul, rising. “I want to take Nellie to our flower-show. You will let her come, Mr. Raymond, I know?”

"Of course I will, my boy; and you must think a great deal of that; for I wouldn't trust my little girl with any other young man in Maybury. Do you want to go, Nellie?"

66

Yes, father: I should like it very much." "Ah! you put me in mind of old times. I was young myself once, Nellie, and so was your poor mother.'

Perhaps he meant a great deal in that too. Paul took it as if the old man was willing to be a father-in-law whenever he was wanted; but

Nellie seemed perfectly unconscious of any such relationship being hinted at. At all events, the old man, in his enthusiasm, took a few steps backwards, tnmbled up against the table, and upset Nellie's workbox (it was an old one, and had belonged to her mother), the lid of which was completely knocked off by the fall.

"O, father!" cried Nellie, "how could you? See! the lid is quite broken!"

"Why, so it is!" said Mr. Raymond, staring in a most comical manner at the needles, scissors, and reels of cotton, which were lying on the floor.

"Never mind, Nellie," said Paul: "I will take the box home with me to-night, and soon mend it. I can bring it back to-morrow, when I call to take you to the flower-show."

And then Paul went away, taking the workbox with him. It was a very dark night, and the clover fields looked particularly lone and dreary; but what was that to him? Had he not seen Nellie? Had he not been all the evening in her presence? And the thoughts he had would have been pleasant companions, and made the walk seem delightful, had it been twenty times as long. As he neared his home, he suddenly remembered that all his tools were at the work. shop; and he had promised Nellie to bring her the box mended the next day. As they were to leave-off work early on the morrow, he knew that there would be plenty of work to employ his time in the shop; and, as he could on no account disappoint Nellie, the only alternative left was to go to Maybury at once, get the things he wanted, bring them home, and, by rising an hour earlier the next morning, get the box mended in time to be off to his regular work. After all, it was only a few miles' walk; and what is that to a strong young man of twenty-three when it is to serve the prettiest girl in the village?

Paul reached Maybury at a little before eleven. Every house was closed-even the "Blue Dragon," for a wonder! There were but few lights in any of the windows; and the night was darker than ever. He soon came to Mr. Elton's house, entered the workshop, and, as he had no light, left the door a little open, so as to be able to see his way to his bag of tools. Then he remembered having left them in one of the upper rooms, where he had been at work repairing a lock that very afternoon. He crept softly upstairs, for fear of waking the old housekeeper, found his tools, and was about to descend, when he fancied he heard a noise in Mr. Elton's private room, which adjoined the workshop below. At the same time, the wind, coming through an open window, closed the door of the room in which Paul was; and, it being so dark, it was some moments before he could find the handle. Then he hurried downstairs, but no one was there; so, thinking it must have been the wind, he re-locked the workshop-door, and walked quickly home, too much engaged in thinking about the pleasant hours he would have with Nellie at the mor

row's flower-show, to trouble himself about anything else.

Paul felt very happy when he reached home. His mother was sitting comfortably by the fire (I know some old women in country places who like a fire all the year round); and supper was waiting for him on the table. And Paul talked about Nellie, thinking of the time when she might be sitting in that very room; and hs mother (she was a good old soul, was his mother) listened to her son's dream of future happiness with as much interest as if the world was new to her, instead of her having had some fifty years' experience of the troubles and sorrows of life. Then he went to bed, placing Nellie's workbox under his pillow (it was foolish, perhaps to say nothing about being hard and uncomfortable; but, maybe, you, reader, have done things just as foolish in your time, and would have been exceedingly angry if anyone bad laughed at you for doing so); and he prayed that he might live such a life as to be worthy of the girl whom he thought, in his youthful, honest simplicity, the greatest prize worth winning in this world.

CHAP. II.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

Saturday morning. The bright autumn sun and Paul Dale rose about the same time. The sun, streaming through the window of Paul's room, made the place look immensely cheerful. Paul, singing "My Pretty Jane" (it was a favourite song of his, only he wished it had been called "My Pretty Nellie "), set to work at once at the box. He was as careful in mending it as if he had been repairing a workbox for the Queen herself, and had only just finished when his mother came in to tell him that breakfast was waiting.

Now, Paul received good wages; and, as he spent very little, had managed to save within the last few years over thirty pounds. He did not like having such a sum left all day in his lonely cottage; so, having to go to the bank that morning with the money received the day before for Mr. Elton, he thought it would be a good opportunity to pay in his own savings.

When Paul reached Maybury, he found the people standing talking in excited groups, as if something out of the way had happened.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Paul of the first acquaintance he met.

"Matter!" was the answer; "6 why Mr. Elton, your master, has been robbed. Have'nt you heard of it?"

"Robbed!" cried Paul, and he hurried towards the workshop. His fellow-workmen were already there, and William Fenning was talking to two policemen, who, as soon as Paul entered, seized him, exclaiming, "You are our