satisfied himself that there was no great mischief to be apprehended; for presently he came in to his master's side, gave him a rub on the knee, and then began to groom himself with his tongue.

'Poor old Dabble,' said his master, scratching his head with a fore-finger; and the animal, instead of purring, like another cat, gave a little murmured Yow, yow!' as evident an attempt to speak as possible.

'Dabble. Polite for diable?' I inquired. 'Yes. He is my familiar, and, with one exception, my only friend and companion. Are you not,

Dabble?'

'Yow, yow!' 'Is he old?'

Very. Fifteen years, I should say.'

I do not think that I am very curious about other people's private affairs as a general rule, but I certainly confess to having felt that impertinent passion in the present instance. Who was this young man, whose manners, phraseology, and accent bespoke him an educated gentleman; and why did he live in a ruin alone with a black cat double the size and intelligence of other black cats? Well, he didn't, quite. There was a witch connected with the establishment, and presently she came in. Her hooked nose, curved chin, and general appearance might fairly have burned her, were faith not cold, without collateral evidence; but she carried her broom in her hand, and the black cat ran to her, rubbed against her old legs, sat up and plunged his claws again and again into her dress with ecstatic grasps. Damnatory signs against the whole family: Tortures for three!' the order peremptorily demanded by the fitness of things, Mr Toole. Yet she was a poor, degenerate, harmless witch; perhaps a lapsed witch, who had been baptised, for she was afraid of the thunder, and shook like a screw-steamer in a gale whenever a fresh clap came. She had taken refuge in a vault which was once a cellar, and had been flooded out. The sight of me frightened her almost as much as the thunder and the water.

We are not used to visitors,' said the young man with a smile of explanation. This gentle man has come in for shelter, Molly. Have we anything to offer him besides dry bread and hard

cider ?'

Dabble brought in a rabbit early this morning, Master Walter,' mumbled the old woman.

Good Dabble!' and he patted the cat's head. 'Well, cook the rabbit for us, please, Molly.'

There were some smouldering wood-embers on the large Hearth, which the old woman raked together and blew up into a flame; and then adding fresh fuel, she disappeared to skin the Dabblecaptured bunny, which was in due time boiled and set before us. Our table-cloth, though very coarse, was clean, and the same might be said of the iron forks. I added the bread and cheese from my knapsack to the common stock. My host took the head of his table with the air of a Belgravian entertainer; Dabble stood at his side on his hindlegs, with his fore-paws and black head appearing over the edge of the board till he received a suitable morsel, when he went down and despatched it on the floor, reappearing when it was finished. If his master proved dilatory, he put out a paw sideways, and dabbed his arm, at the same time uttering a plaintive meaow.

When we three had finished our meal, we left

the table, and the harmless witch sat down and had her dinner before clearing away. Of course I had been abstemious. One rabbit amongst four is not a gorge; try it.

I have gone into these details of my first meeting with Walter Musgrave in his ruin, because they made a great impression upon me. I should not have been surprised to find a poor but proud Don placed in a corresponding position in some corner of Spain; or even in Ireland, the situation would not have seemed abnormal. But that an English gentleman, so reduced, and having good health, should not have emigrated, or enlisted, or driven a cab, supposing no one would give him ninety pounds a year as a clerk, was an unintelligible muddle to me.

But an impatient reader will decline to take any interest in such reflections, so I will simply state, without explanation, that my host and I grew very friendly before we parted that night; that I walked over from Dowd again next day, and persuaded him to go back with me and eat a return dinner; that I became very intimate with him, and prolonged my stay in the neighbourhood in consequence; and that he told me his history.

It was a story of a lawsuit. For three generations the Musgraves had been throwing away substance in their race after a shadow, until the family and its acres had dwindled down to this one member, the old ruinous mansion, and a few roods of grass-land about it. Lawyers had devoured the rest. Honest lawyers, look you; for the shadow appeared very tangible, and I believe that the cleverest of them had a bona fide confidence in pulling his client safe through.

from

The bone of contention was freehold ground in a thriving city; a very nice bone, with plenty of meat upon it. The Musgraves could not make their title clear; neither could the Contremusgraves make their title clear, and so the property remained unproductive. The houses could not be let, or pulled down, or patched up. The Musgrave claim was admitted to be very strong, but one link in the chain was wanting: a certain deed which was known to exist, but could not be found any where. The provoking part of the matter was that it had been discovered once, by the present claimant's grandfather, but at that time other necessary legal evidence, since collected, had not been got together, and the old man, who was queer the effects of hope deferred, combined with that of a pistol-wound in the head he had received in a duel arising out of the suit, had stowed the important document away in a safe so carefully, that no one had since been able to find it; for he was struck down by a fit, and died without having the power to communicate the hiding-place to his only son, who was hurriedly summoned to his dying bed. A minute description of the document, together with an account of how he obtained it, was found in his will; and in the next legal tussle, this was put in with some confidence that, combined with the rest of the case, it would be accepted as evidence. But after a deal of learned argument, and some hesitation, the authorities who had to decide the matter declined to take the will for the deed, and the case was kept for the benefit of a fresh set of lawyers, at that time not out of their dinners and articles. Thus the Musgrave property remained bleeding. My friend's father got pretty well the last drop out of it, and then married, not

The goodly Musgrave estates were now all gone, as has been said, the house and homestead being alone retained. This last bit of strand was stuck to tenaciously, because it was pretty certain that the iron safe, with the coveted parchment inside it, was somewhere about the premises. But where? It is needless to say that it had been well hunted for, experienced detectives having been employed in the search; and, indeed, the ruinous state of the house was in no small measure owing to the ruthless manner in which some of these investigations had been conducted.

Happily, not quite all the money of Walter Musgrave's mother went to the lawyers; some of it was spent in educating him in a manner befitting the position he would hold when the lawsuit was over, and the valuable house-property at his disposal. But his father died, and the funds gave out before he had finished his intended course, and he found himself in the queer, tantalising, povertystricken, brain-destroying condition in which I discovered him when photography and a thunderstorm brought us together.

When he first commenced his confidences, I was beyond expression dismayed. O my prophetic soul, his great-grandfather!' I mentally exclaimed, when he opened with a short biography of that ancestor. But by degrees I grew interested; his account was clear enough, if mine is not, and he had confirmatory documents to shew for everything he advanced. At last, I was unable to conceive how it was possible to keep him out of what seemed so undoubtedly his own; but then I am not a lawyer.

Nevertheless, as soon as we were intimate enough for such a liberty, I talked reason to him, urging him to throw the losing game up, leave the ruin to the care of Molly and Dabble, and look about for some method of earning bread and bacon; for even as an unskilled artisan he would live better than he did at present.

He let his remaining patch of grass-land for forty pounds a year; he got about ten pounds for the apples in his orchard, and half as much more for the hay which was cut in it. Dabble, who was an arrant, but not a self-seeking poacher, occasionally brought in a rabbit or a leveret, and that was what the last of the Musgraves lived on.

He owned that it savoured of lunacy to go on like that; that his best course would be to sell what little homestead remained to him, which he could do at a fancy price, as his retaining possession of it destroyed the compactness of the remainder of the estate, and make a fresh start in the world, but said that he simply could not do it. 'Surely you could make one vigorous effort,' said I.

'Of course I could,' he replied, 'if that were all; but after it was made-a week after, or a month, or a year, or five years after-I should be drawn back into this inherited struggle, and if I then had to bear the reflection that I had thrown away a chance, I feel certain that a sentiment of remorseful regret would drive me mad. No, you might just as well tell Laocoon to make an effort and

So I never annoyed him with common-sense again, and indeed, after a little while, I caught the Chancery infection myself. Of course, it was but in a mild form, as I had no property of my own at stake, but I had it sufficiently to alter my ideas entirely, and sympathise with the persistent struggle with fate in which my new friend was engaged. To tell the truth, I was in an unhealthy state of mind at that time, having been recently jilted, a misfortune which, till they grow accustomed to it, often makes young men sulky with the world in general. My sulks took the form of isolation tempered by photography; and residence at Dowd, with a man bound to go crazy, a witch, and an uncanny black cat for my sole acquaintances, exactly suited me just then. There is a freemasonry amongst the forlorn in love which enables them to recognise one another, and I soon learned that Musgrave had met a certain Mary, the daughter of a poor clergyman who had acted as his private tutor, and that he had indulged in day-dreams of taking his degree, going into orders, and leading a life of married bliss in a parsonage on a hundred a year; but he had to leave the university abruptly when his father died and left him the dormant lawsuit, and nothing else. Then at first he was sanguine of being able shortly to offer his Mary a better home than they had modestly pictured for themselves; but after awhile, when he had well studied the story of the family failures, his love was but another wedge in the torture-boot.

I consoled him with the reflection that his case was far better than mine; his girl was faithful to him, or at least he thought so, and he had a chance; whereas, I knew for certain that the heart of mine was a mere pop-gun, and that I had been shot out of it as another fellow popped in. But he did not pity me properly, for he considered that I was lucky in that she had changed her mind before marriage instead of after, and I could not contradict that.

But the cup of Musgrave's misfortunes was not yet full. Dabble died.

Do you laugh at people who grieve for pet animals? I don't. Only a dog!' folks say. Well, a dog who loves me is better worth my regret than a continent full of men and women who don't. Still more absurdly, argument is sometimes attempted, and we are told not to give a second thought to the loss of an animal that has no soul.' Now, surely, if the death of dog, cat, or horse meant its utter annihilation, that is an extra cause for sorrow. But there is no reason for such a notion. Read Butler's Analogy, and never speak with that ignorant confidence again. I do not refer you to Plato, a heathen Greek, but to Bishop Butler, as orthodox a man as yourselfperhaps more so.

Well, whatever may be the spiritual endowment of other animals, Dabble must have had a soul; at least, he reasoned, and certainly would have talked, if the formation of his mouth had permitted him. Do you mean to tell me that a mere breathing-machine would have found out that his master wanted rabbits, without being told, and so brought them home when he caught them, instead of eating them quietly in the woods?

He took no medicine, he had no doctor, and yet

he died, poor dear, which looks as if the medical profession was slandered sometimes. His illness was short. He did not eat one morning; the next, his coat was rough, and he did not lick it; on the third, he went about mewing, and his eyes got filmy; on the fourth, he had convulsions, in the course of one of which he succumbed.

We made a wooden box for him, and determined to bury him in the orchard, under his favourite tree, where he used to scratch holes, and lie in wait for dickey-birds. It was on a lovely autumn evening that we bore the box to this spot, and commenced our sad preparations. Musgrave being chief-mourner, I took the part of sexton, and struck the spade into the ground. For a little while, the task was easy; then I came on roots, which delayed me. Hacking through them, however, I dug a grave some three feet deep, and we tried to carry the obsequies a stage farther; but the box stuck: the grave was not wide enough. I began again at the sides, and soon widened it; but then it looked too shallow, and I dug down a little deeper-not much, for I was stopped by something harder than a root; a big stone, probably. It was impossible to make any impression on it; so, as one does not like to be beaten, I dug round it, and tried to get it up bodily. Musgrave had to help, and then we disinterred a square iron box.

'By Jove!' cried I, 'I wonder if it is the safe hidden away by your grandfather?'

Musgrave flushed very red, and then turned deadly pale.

'Bound to be,' said he; and the deed is in it.' In spite of the suspense, he put the safe on one side until we had lowered Dabble into its place, which he exactly fitted, and filled in the grave. Then we took our discovery home, and wrenched the lid off. There was the parchment safe enough, considerably discoloured, but quite legible.

Well, Musgrave had no other way of raising money for the reopening of the big suit, so he sold the ruin and the orchard. The case was clear enough, now the missing link was supplied; and he established his claim to the property which had been so long in dispute without much trouble or delay. He married his Mary, did not cut me when the increasing value of his freeholds made him very rich, and was always grateful to Dabble, who had brought him rabbits when living, and a fortune when dead.

OLD HATS.

THOSE grand pictorial works of history, the frescoes of Egypt and Assyria, supply us with a sort of fossil fashion-book of the dead past. There, on red granite and baked clay, on gray limestone and black basalt, stands limned in imperishable colours the long array of slaves, and captives, and auxiliaries that graced the triumphal procession of some conquering king. A great variety of physical types and of national costumes have thus been preserved from oblivion, and amid other head-gear, there here and there crops up what may fairly be dubbed a hat.

More often, however, at Nineveh than at Memphis or Luxor. The mighty Mesopotamian empires were indeed brought into closer contact with hat-wearing races than was the case with Pharaoh and his subjects. The Scythian foes of the Great Queen wore hats; so did the Parthian light horse who served beneath her standard. Pagan

Armenians had hats closely resembling those still worn by their Christian descendants, and these were chiefly of thick felt or of varnished cloth, while the only Egyptian representative of this style of headdress was the shapeless structure of coarse straw that crowned the head of the Coptic husbandman. That the Jews wore hats, at anyrate during and after the Captivity, is tolerably certain. The Eng lish translators were accurate on this point. Those were hats, not caps, which were bound down over the brows of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, before they were cast into the burning fiery furnace, filled with the fuel peculiar to that timberless land-the cut grass of the weedy plain. The helmeted legionaries of Rome fought against Zealots in hats, and when Jerusalem fell, and every mar ket was glutted with Jewish slaves, the scattered Hebrews familiarised the provincial populations of the empire with the sight of a covering for the head that must to most of them have been strange indeed. Greece has never taken kindly to the hat. Still less was old Hellas willing to adopt one of the most distinctive badges of her hereditary enemies. That the Mede wore a hat would of itself have been a reason for hating such an article of attire. The old Persian Sun-worshippers wore hats when they followed Xerxes or marched with Chosroes, as their humble offspring the Parsees of India still do. Most members of the huge Mongolian family have preferred this style of head-gear to anything more soft or supple. The literary aristocracy of China have deserted it for the mandarin сар, the coolie's shaven head is still protected by a crown and brim of thickly plaited rice-straw. Tartars, whether Buddhist or Mohammedan, hold fast to the hat. It was with stiff cylinders on their heads that the Turks, Seljukian and Ottoman alike, first poured over the frontier of the helpless Byzantine empire.

but

The turban, which to most of us seems so distinctively the mark of the Moslem, is not by any means universally adopted by followers of the Prophet. It is not only that Mussulman heretics, like the Shiites of Persia, adhere to their high caps of black lambskin. Nobody ever impugned the orthodoxy of the finder of the rusty sword of the victor of Bajazet, the terrible Timur-Lenk. Yet the Scourge of Asia wore a hat as he told his beads and concerted his conquests and his massacres. The crafty conqueror of Constantinople, Mahomet II. himself, unconsciously sat for his portrait to some draughtsman among those convenient Genoese merchants who helped him to capture the capital of Eastern Christendom, and he has come down to us in an absurdly tall white hat, such as those professionally holy men, the dervishes, now wear. There are in the Tell of Algeria native chiefs, entitled to the prefix of Cid or Sidi, and whose lives are rigidly shaped on Koran precepts, yet who wear on all occasions of ceremony weighty hats with brims of impossible breadth. Among Asiatics who do not turn their faces to Mecca when they pray, there are the Japanese, who build hats for civilian wear, like most other things, of paper, and the Philippine and Molucca islanders, whom the Spaniards found thatched with cone-shaped head-coverings of reeds and straw, such as they still affect.

During the dark, and indeed, if the phrase may be used, even the twilight ages, hats were sup pressed throughout Europe. The cap, the coif, the

hood, lorded it everywhere. No one wore a hat except the poor Jew, at the sight of whose detested gabardine and the yellow cylinder which, as per act of parliament, he slunk abroad in, the boys set up a hoot of scornful opprobrium. The revival of learning was also the revival of hats. Indeed, just as some scholarship and some art-knowledge existed before Francis I. of France kindly took Minerva and the Muses under his splendid patronage, so had hats begun to assert themselves before the first French soldier found a grave in Italy. It was a hat around which Louis XI. wore those tiny leaden effigies of saints whom he was apt to invoke before murdering or robbing somebody as a matter of state policy. Germany favoured absurd little hats that could not easily be balanced on the head they were supposed to shelter. The Low Countries had elected a more comfortable breadth of brim. English men of worship' had assumed a hat, frequently with an iron lining, as a proper precaution in the days of handblows and the Wars of the Roses. And presently the hat reigned supreme, sending down the deposed cap to take a subordinate place in the world's esteem, and abolishing the hood altogether.

Among the hats of the later middle ages, two stand conspicuously forth. The cardinal's red was known everywhere within the compass of a legate's journeyings, or a nuncio's jurisdiction. The hat of state of the archducal House of Austria had merely a local interest; but then it was as dear to Austrians as the Iron Crown to Lombardy, or the diadem of Stephen to the Hungarians. With them, the head of the Hapsburgs-Emperor of the Romans and King of the Germans as he might have been proclaimed at Worms-was simply Archduke-their own Archduke. He did not wear a crown when he appeared as their ruler; he wore a hat. And that glorified hat, to this very hour, is carefully guarded and jealously locked up in the innermost chamber of a townhall as strong as a fortress; and the nine keys of the chest that holds the treasure are intrusted to nine councillors, who may never, without prodigious fuss, publicity, and ceremony, extract the sacred beaver from its honourable durance. The hat which Geissler, Austrian bailiff in a Swiss valley, is fabled to have set upon a pole to receive homage from the sturdy dalesmen, and which drew forth for us the pretty story of Tell and the apple, must surely have been a pale reflex of the tremendous hat of Geissler's archducal master.

The steeple-crowned hat of Queen Elizabeth's time really has a weird look. It has come, as an article of feminine attire, to be attributed to witches. The witch of the earlier half of the seventeenth century might as well have equipped herself to ride to some midnight festival without her broomstick and black cat, as without one of the pointed hats which had been in high fashion when the Armada threatened our shores. Yet these hats lingered in use among rustic females long after the court had discarded and the poets ridiculed them. We see in the vignettes of Izaak Walton's Angler -executed in the reign of James II.-the deathless milkmaid and her quaint mother in these portentous hats, with long and broad strings hanging down. Queen Anne beheld, not only as the scholastic rhymer declared

Newton high enthroned
Amongst the heavenly host;

but also, what was perhaps more interesting to the Girl of the Period, the advent of hats for ladies' wear, not very dissimilar to the 'Dolly Varden' hat of our own day, and which held their ground pretty firmly through the century, until they were extinguished by the gigantic bonnets that were worn when George III. was struggling against the obtrusive Corsican, and Queen Charlotte as yet but a middle-aged princess.

Steeple hats, as regarded masculine wear, came to be a badge of faction. The men of buff and iron, they of the falling bands and sad-coloured raiment, and terrible trenchant rapiers, wore them in battle and in council. The members of that High Court of Justice that doomed the king to block and axe-Bradshaw and Ludlow, and the other irregular judges-thrust down their steeple hats more firmly over their frowning brows as one by one they signed the sentence of death. On the other hand, the cavaliers, who rode after Rupert, and who scoffed at the stiff ugliness of Puritan attire, wore a hat perhaps prettier and more picturesque than any that has been invented since that day. Moderate as to crown and brim, elegant of shape, and gaily set off by its dancing plume of white ostrich feathers, it surpassed the Spanish beaver of Charles II.'s reign, and was far superior to the flat-topped hat which had suited the round face of bluff King Harry, and which is now considered the natural appanage of Her Majesty's beef-eaters. The three-cornered hat, of which Louis XIV. was the great patron, enjoyed a long popularity, although it underwent, in the course of a hundred years or so, as many changes as the renowned knife of that sentimental sailor who, after having the instrument thrice rebladed, and once fitted with a new handle, regarded it as a 'keepsake' still. The fierce little hat of Marlborough's days, with its Ramillies cock, its broad lace, and the dainty snow-white edging of tiny, downy feathers, was not by any means twinbrother to the ungainly head-gear which, in times not very remote, the naval veterans of Greenwich Hospital put on as part of their uniform; and this, again, differed much from the 'opera hat' of our great-grandsires, the chapeau bras of the French; a slim contrivance that was made to be worn under the arm rather than on the head, and which never seemed quite in its right place when it was perched on the frizzled and powdered locks of its owner.

Hats, by the first year of the seventeenth century, had begun to moult, so far as their feathers were concerned, but they were decorated with cockades of the national or dynastic colour, and above all, they were handsomely bound with gold or silver. We have come, with the change of manners and opinions, inevitable after a lapse of time, to think lightly of these ornaments. We smile as young Buttons, the surgeon's page and bottle-boy, goes by with his oil-cloth-covered basketful of pink draughts, and a glittering band of gold around his shiny hat; but even lynx-eyed Swift saw nothing ridiculous in the richly laced beavers worn by the gentlemen whom he daily met, and Johnson could not easily have been made to understand how soon such finery would be relegated to footmen. The tall hats of the French revolutionary epoch, the astonishing things which the Merveilleux and Incroyables, the dandies and wits of the Parisian party of progress, clapped upon

their heads as the monarchy tottered to its fall, were probably meant as a protest against the lank three-cornered head-gear, which withered old viscounts and fresh-complexioned cadets of Breton houses persisted in retaining as they hung about the Tuileries and sneered at the popular ferment. Perhaps it was in a similar spirit of defiance to subversive Gaul that our own grandfathers put on the hideous hat that is still, throughout the continent, more or less associated with the idea of an Englishman. That low-crowned, uncompromising broadbrim of the coaching-days, was supposed to be somehow mixed up with high taxes cheerfully borne, high prices willingly paid, and the general maintenance of our glorious constitution against home renovators and foreign foes. We see it in mildewed caricatures, usually in company with a many-caped greatcoat, flapped pockets, a stout stick, and a bull-dog; the whole being the acknowledged presentment of that sturdy John who was once esteemed rather as a model to ingenuous youth than in any merely ludicrous point of view.

The bell-crowned successor of the flat old favourite of the public never attained to the same rank in popular regard. It was a rakish hat from the beginning, associated in men's minds with punch, pugilism, and the wild Mohock pranks to which the roystering bucks and bloods of the later Georgian era were peculiarly prone. It suggested not merely the turf and the road, the tavern and the prize-ring, but also debts, gambling, wrenching off of knockers, thrashing of watchmen, painting house-fronts of a staring red and pea-green, and all the practical joking of Corinthian Tom and his high-spirited comrades. It was replaced by a more domestic-looking beaver; and from that time to this, the chimney-pot cylinder, though subject to some variations as to height and breadth, has only been notable in so far as silk has utterly superseded the costly fur of the North American rodent. Some mention is deserved by the so-called Leghorn hats, delicately braided by deft fingers out of selected straw, among the pleasant vales of Tuscany; by the yet daintier sun-shades of Panama, for which French customers are willing to give what to us appears a preposterous price; by the cabbage-palm hats of Australia, the Talipot hats of Ceylon, the pith hats worn as a protection against sun-stroke both in India and China. The Burmese hatter knows no material handier for his purpose than split bamboo, while the water-proof hats of seamen probably earned for them their seventeenth century nickname of 'tarpaulins.'

So long as it will hold together, a hat, be it never so battered and shapeless, retains a certain value in the eyes of the experienced rag-picker. Those Jewish perambulating merchants, whose melancholy monotone of 'Old clo' is as familiar to the inhabitants of London as is the sight of the chiffonier's hook and bag to the denizens of Paris, will seldom refuse to invest their copper capital in hats. Those ill-treated cylinders, crushed, frayed, and dim, are carried off to be rejuvenated, in frowsy back-shops, by dark-eyed Miriams and hook-nosed Josephs. It is wonderful to mark the transformation which the cunning touch of these manipulators can effect; or how their glue and brown paper, their peach-black and dyed rabbit's fur, can stiffen and smarten the mangiest old chimney-pot into the semblance of its glossy prime. An old hat, refreshed at this perennial

Fountain of Youth, is really a very creditable work of art. No Old Master, worm-eaten and chocolate-hued, disinterred from a garret in Ghent, and furbished for sale to millionaire purchasers in England, could be touched up with lighter hand or more trembling care. There it is at lastbrighter than new, sleek, trim, oily, the sprucest, if not the most durable of hats. A thing of beauty it is, but not for long destined to be a joy to its sanguine purchaser.

Among the things which they manage best in France are certainly old hats. French Nathan, for some mysterious reason, is deeper than his brother, Nathan of Petticoat Lane, in the secrets of the elixir which turns old clothes into new. M. Nathan is no conjurer. He never tries the proverbially difficult experiment of placing young heads on old shoulders. But how many, many times has he succeeded in putting old hats on young heads! That French Israelite is a real artist. His womankind serve him well, making it a labour of love to replace the lost nap, and handling the bare edges as gingerly as if the felt or pasteboard below were nitro-glycerine ready to explode under rough usage. Nathan's refreshed hats are not dear. At the world-famous Marché du Temple, an old hat, styled, in the technical jargon of the market, a 'niolle retapée,' was quoted, on an average, at three francs. Eight sous represents the rag-picker's charge; the rest is for labour, embellishments, and a fair profit. At halfa-crown, the pretty, brilliant thing-a very Faust of a hat, made beautiful by some ringleted Mephistopheles in an entresol-seems cheap. It bears fine weather well, and may figure creditably on the Boulevards for three consecutive Sundays. But at the first downpour of rain, glue and gum and paint, silk and brown paper, resolve into their original constituents, and the whole fabric collapses like a dissolving view.

A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE

CHAPTER XXIX.-BRIGNON.

IF Alice Renn had been the sort of girl Helen took her for, or endeavoured to convince herself she was, it is probable that she would now have had good cause for jealousy. The two things that conduce to a man's unfaithfulness, in about equal proportions, are dislike of his wife, and liking for another woman; and Arthur, who had been hitherto influenced by the latter feeling only, was now urged by both. It is true he did not dislike Helen to the extent of aversion, and far less did he wish her harm. But his love for her, now pity had ceased, was gone, and, what is worse in such cases, much of his respect had gone with it. He had no suspicion that she had permitted Allardyce to speak to her such words as he had spoken, but his confidence in her was shaken to its foundation. If he had ever given her his real affections, they returned to him now, perhaps to be bestowed elsewhere, if there had been a chance of their acceptance. But he well knew there was none. Jenny never spoke with him, never looked at him again, after that fatal meeting in the chalk-pit. But he did not burn his old love-letters, as he had once intended to do, and he hung the love-gift that she had been wont to wear about his own neck, and next his heart. If Helen could have looked into