naught by unaccountable and invisible misdemeanors of fact. Sand rocks will slide into shales, conglomerates become fine sands, favorite coal conceal itself under a degraded type, never-to-be-mistaken limestone disappear, or some new calcareous layer intrude itself among previously pure clay beds. There'll be metamorphoses of rocks, hidden rolls, increased and even reversed dips, strata thrown over on their backs, down throws and up throws, and oblique dislocations of crust. In some places, the whole operation of mining is a perpetual experiment, no one knowing what an hour may bring forth, nor the wisest able to fix a certain value on an acre, a bed, or a gangway. Like a magician among his uneasy spirits, the coal hunter must be forever on his guard against surprises of all kinds, and expect his embarrassments, conjectures and discoveries to begin anew at every fresh location. When beds are crushed together, folded up, turned over, and every hillside shows rocks dipping a different way, the problem becomes of enormous difficulty, and I am not to blame for this great disappointment. I have made up my mind I will do nothing rashly, nothing I should regret in another world. I have no wish

to revenge.

I

If a man wrong me, hereafter, remorse will haunt him. In a short time we shall all stand before the judgment seat. may be the prey of slander. I shall do nothing but stand against the wall and defend myself. It is pretty hard for one man to stand up and keep off howling enemies, making threats of prison and disgrace-perilling life, liberty, and

estate."

Well, judge, I told you that man was a scoundrel." "What man?" asked the judge.

Why, the doctor whom I arrested the other day," replied the policeman.

That doctor, man or what not, is all the same to mehas demanded examination in the complaint against him. I suppose he is fool enough to think I will discharge him, but I have made up my mind not to be bothered with these long winded examinations any longer. They are taking the examination before the clerk, and I shall decide of course there was probable cause for the arrest, and send the whole thing down to the Grand Jury."

"You are a trump, Judge," said the policeman. ways knew you were death on scoundrels."

"Al

"Between you and me, Jim, you know I always deal out ample justice to every one who is brought up here—man, woman or child, I don't care who."

Yes, he had often dealt out ample justice, as he called it, and it had been whispered about that a little consultation with him beforehand, and possibly a bribe, no one knew how often had made innocent men the victims of his indiscrimination and recklessness. Every time a Judge takes a bribe, the State totters to its lowest foundations, as if shaken by an earthquake. A good Judge is almost the sole prop of the State; for a good Judge mirrors forth in his opinions not the passions, nor the prejudice, nor the caprice of the people, but only their Laws as expressed in their constitutions and in all their legislative enactments.

The policeman complacently took his leave of His Honor. He had been bribed by some one of the complainant's friends, to use his influence, (that meant bribe,) with the Justice, against Dr. Wendon. He boasted of having great influence with that official in assisting him to come to the right (?) conclusion.

I said the policeman had been bribed, and I have intimated that the Judge was, too, but I cannot prove it. It may be hard always to prove a Judas to be a Judas; for who sees him when he takes a bribe, or who can follow him through all that dark labyrinth, wherein he has betrayed justice.

While Jim goes off to his beat, Mr. Janes goes in Mr. Trap's office to get him to put the doctor through.

Mr. Trap was peculiarly happy in making his clients believe that everything he did for them professionally, was the best that could be done in the premises. Sometimes in the rush and hurry of a city practice, some case would be overlooked and quite forgotten, but Mr. Trap's anxious client would turn up in due course of time to remind him of it. But no matter if the case had gone over from time to time, or had got out of court entirely, Mr. Trap could expatiate largely upon the advantage accruing from such delay in the discovery of new testimony, which must decide the case in favor of his client, or the benefit of some new decis

ion, which was about to be made, and which would make every thing all right.

Of course the client was quite delighted with the delusion that he should surely win at last, and that the law's delays were after all, most wise dispensations of justice, and Mr. Trap, and so the credulous client would go away rejoicing, while Mr. Trap would turn upon his heel saying to himself, "Well! so long as he's satisfied, that's enough.'

"What became of Doctor Wendon's speculation?" said one lady to another, as they were walking down street some three months after the conversation in Mr. Trap's office.

Oh, it was a dead loss, and the lawyers made it out a case of fraud. It was a time of great panic, great scarcity of money, and many really believed the doctor guilty of fraudulent intent. Janes persecuted him relentlessly, actuated by pure revenge because he had lost himself. He said he would persecute the doctor to the last extent of the law, if only to punish him. Of course he knew he could get nothing. The doctor really was imprisoned. He was, I believe, a most upright man. I don't know as he is out of prison yet. I don't know all about the matter. It was a tedious law suit. I couldn't tell about it if I should try. Law is dull enough, except to parties concerned. But I believe the doctor is one of the most honest and honorable of men, and Mr. Janes had most false accounts of the transaction put in the daily papers. If I had been the doctor, I'd

sued him for slander."

Late one evening Nepenthe Stuart sat alone in her room, reading a little note brought by a boy to the door, and this brief warning was all it contained.

"Do not leave the house for ten days. Your life is in danger. SUSAN."

It was nearly midnight, and Mrs. Trap sat up waiting for her husband. He was unusually late. He sat in his office, looking over some papers, and the tall, dark woman sat in front of him, looking over some papers also. Neither spoke for half an hour, until the woman broke the silence at last, and only one thing she said.

"We'll keep him in prison as long as we can, and gold shall pay you, Mr. Trap, plenty of gold."

11

CHAPTER XVI.

FIFTH HOUSE IN THE BLOCK FOR SALE-INQUIRE OF JOHN TRAP.

"And the grass that chokes the portal,
Bends not to the tread of mortal."

THE fifth house in the block was empty, the shutters closed. You could read deserted, in plain letters on the tarnished door-plate, broken shutters, leaf-strewn walk and grass-grown yard. No breath of kindly zephyr cooled the hot, midsummer air long shut up within those brick walls. Wanted, lost, and gone, the three tragedy words of life, mocked you with ghost-voices if you listened at the keyhole, or peered through the neglected shutters, where the lawless sunshine played on the bare walls.

Few noticed the change in the fifth house in the block. One old gentleman, as he passed slowly by, leaning on his cane, said, in an asthmatic whisper, Some doctor used to live there. How things have changed." On the door was a bill in large letters.

No eye, no voice, no footstep met you if you climbed the staircase and entered the vacant front chamber. There was only a little empty crib in the corner. There, for six months had little Violet Wendon nestled, as she twined her dimpled arms close around the doctor's neck at earliest dawn. He called her "his peep of day."

"How pleasant the houses in that row," said many a passer-by at nightfall, "when the chandeliers light up, the damask glows rubier in the gas-light, and a crystal polish glistens on the illuminated windows: but out of that block God has chiselled two glorious souls, and placed them in niches in the upper court of His great studio above.”

'Tis sad to go away from scenes familiar, and come back only to hear strange voices, and meet new faces. Of all the actors in our little programme, all had changed homes the last year save Prudence Potter, whose eventless history was marked by few new eras. There was no near relative for her to lose but brother Zekiel, and he was married. Their two single lives had paralleled so placidly along for years, she could brook no change, and since his wooing and wedding, a hoighty-toity school-girl, with only a pink and white face to recommend her, she could not go back to the old place and see her hitherto precisely managed household af fairs going on at "such loose ends," so she still remains. with cousin Priscilla. She has been talking of " going home next week," ever since we first heard of her.

We will find her one Monday morning reading aloud from an old paper she has picked up in the garret, for she has a passion for rummaging and ransacking; possibly, had she been a man, this propensity might have led to some valuable discovery. She read aloud in a precise and hesitating manner, every now and then turning her paper towards the light, for she has just bought glasses number thirty-six instead of fifty-four, and for once, she owns she has made a mistake. She reads all the murders, shocking casualties and disasters by sea and land

She reads at last, devouring every word as surprising intelligence, part of a letter from Dr. Wendon, who was one of the passengers on the wrecked steamer.

"We were driven by the flames back from the quarterdeck, where we had been standing. I let myself down into the sea by a rope, and tried to swim, holding the child; and my wife was sitting across my shoulder. It was two o'clock in the afternoon; the gunpowder exploded when we had been some time in the water. I tried to hold my child above the water; the water from the screw washed over us for some minutes; first my child was forcibly washed away by the waves out of my arms, and then my wife. I saw them no more. Having lost the rope, I seized a plank that was floating along, and fastened myself to it. I was getting faint and weary when I saw in the distance a vessel. I tried to steer towards it. After nearly three hours I reached it. I remember very little about the fate of the steamer. I was completely exhausted when taken on board the vessel."