ik©

as?©®

By George R. Sims

ROBERT W. WOODRUFF LIBRARY

ROWLANDS' ARTICLES

For the Hair, Complexion and Teeth, are the PUREST and BEST.

nnnilTH A Pure non-gritty Tooth Pow- I il III M I II der: it whitens the Teeth, UL/Ull I \j Prevents decay and sweeteDs

— _— — — — the breath ; is more efficacious than pastes or washes.

MACASSAR OIL

preserves and beautifies the hair, and prevents it falling off or turning grey ; is the best Brilliantine for ladies' and children's hair, being less greasy and drying than ordinary Brilliantine, and can be had in a golden colour for fair bair. Sizes, 3/8, 7/-, 10/6, equal to four small.

is a most soothing, heal- ing and refreshing milk for the face, hands and arms. It prevents and removes Freckles, Tan, Sunburn, Redness and Roughness of the Skin, soothes and heals all Irritation, Chaps, Chilblains, Cutaneous Eruptions, &c, and produces a beautiful and delicate complexion. Bottles, 2/3 and 4/6.

FQQFMPF flF TYRF eflectua"y dves Re<* or Grey Hair a permanent Brown

C! BifftUI A A p"re Toilet Powder in White, Rose or Cream Tints, 2/8 per box. tUMJrllA. Ask Chemists for ROWLANDS' ARTICLES, of zo.Hatton Garden,

London, and avoid spurious imitations.

KALYDOR

K EATINGS- POWDER!

KEATING'S <-, COUGH LOZENGES.

Absolutely the best-known remedy ever made for

COUGHS, ASTHMA, BRONCHITIS

Strongly recommended By the most eminent Doctors.

TINS ONLY, 1/15 and 2/9.

HARTMANN'S

Most Comfortable and Healthful for Home Use and when Travel ling.

NO WASHING REQUIRED. In Packets . . 6d. half dozen.

„ . 1/-, 1/4, S/- one dozen.

Can be obtained from all Ladies' Outfitting Establishments, Drapers and Chemists. Packets of one dozen at 1/8, 1/7 and 3/3, post free, with

HYGIENIC WOOD WOOL

DIAPERS.

descriptive Circular, containing' Testimonials from all the principal Hospitals and Leading MemLers of the Medical Profession.

Address "THE MANAGERESS," Tff-R ftA-KriTAPV wnnn wnrrr. on t^^ 26, Thavies Inn, LONDON, E.C.

HOT WATER INSTANTLY, NIGHT OR DAY. EWART'S LIGHTNING GEYSER WITH PATENT DUAL VALVES

AND

SAFETY VENT PIPE.

346-350, EUSTON RD.,

LQNDON.

Eighteen Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals.

WM WOOLLAMS & CO.

ORIGINAL MAKERS OF

ARTISTIC WALL-PAPERS

Free from Arsenic.

ts- special ter:tis fob export.

Sole Address: Note Trade Mark. 110i Hig.n street (near Manchester Square), London, W.

FURNISH

THROUGHOUT

(Regd,

o^

1fl&

iV. ^\

&

co

Catalogue post free.

HAMPSTEAD ROAD, LONDON, W.

FRAMPTON'S PILL OF HEALTH.

For Femalks these Pills are truly excellent, removing Headache, Depression of Spirits, Nervous Affections, Pimples, Sallowness of the Skin, and give a healthy bloom to the complexion.

All Chemists at Is. ljd. and 2s. 9d. per box.

BLAIR'S

GOUT PILLS.

The Great Remedy for Gout, Rheumatism, Sciatica and Lumbago.

The excruciating pain is quickly relieved and cured in a few days by this celebrated Medicine.

No restraint of diet during use, sure, safe and effectual.

All Chemists at Is. ljd. atid

POPULAR TWO-SHILLING NOVELS.

V This is a SELECTION only.— FULL LISTS of 4S0 NOVELS free by post.

By Mrs. ALEXANDER. Maid, Wife, or Widow ? | Valerie's Fate. By GRANT ALLEN.

The Beckoning Hand. The Devil's Die. This Mortal Coil. The Tents of Stem.

Strange Stories. In all Shades. For Malmie's Sake. Philistia. I Babylon.

By ALAN ST. AUBYN. A Fellow of Trinity.

By ARTEMUS WARD. Artemus Ward's Complete Works. By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. Red Spider. I Eve.

By FRANK BARRETT.

Fettered for Life. By BESANT AND RICE.

Ready- Money Mortiboy With Harp and Crown. This Son of Vulcan. My Little Girl. The Case of Mr.Lucraft. The Golden Butterfly.

By Cella's Arbour. The Monks of Thelema 'TwaslnTrafalgar'sBay The Seamy Side. Ten Years' Tenant. Chaplain of the Fleet.

By WALTER BESANT. All Sorts A Conditions. Uncle Jack. The Captains' Room. Children of Gibeon. All in a Garden Fair. World wentwell then. Dorothy Forster. Herr Paulus.

For Faith and Freedom. By BRET HARTE. An Heiress of Ked Dog. [ Gabriel Conroy. Luck of Roaring Camp Maruja. I Flip.

Oalifornlan Stories. | APhyllisof the Sierras By ROBERT BUCHANAN.

Shadow of the Sword. A Child of Nature. God and the Man. Annan Water. I Matt. The New Abelard.

Martyrdomof Madeline Love Me for Ever. Foxglove Manor. Master of the Mine. The Heir of Linne.

By HALL CAINE.

The Shadow of a Crime. I A Son of Hagar.

The Deemster.

By COMMANDER CAMERON.

The Cruise of the "Black Prince."

By Mrs. LOVETT CAMERON.

Juliet's Guardian. I Deceivers Ever.

AUSTIN CLARE.— For Love of a Lass. By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVE, PaulFerroll. | Why Paul Ferroll Killed HisWife By MORTIMER & FRANCES COLLINS. Sweet Anne Page. , Transmigration. Midnight to Midnight. A Fight with Fortune Sweet and Twenty. The Village Comedy. Frances. | You Play me False.

Blacksmith and Scholar. By WILKIE COLLINS. Armadale. | AfterDark Antonina. | No Name. Hide and Seek I Basil. The Dead Secret. Queen of Hearts. My Miscellanies. The Woman in White. Moonstone. I Legacy of Man and Wife. [Cain. Poor Miss Finch. Miss or Mrs.? The New Magdalen,

The Frozen Deep. The Law and the Lady. The Two Destinies. The Haunted Hotel. The Fallen Leaves. Jezebel's Daughter. The Black Robe. Heart and Science. " I Say No." The Evil Genius. Little Novels. A Rogue's Life. By DUTTON COOK. Leo. | Paul Foster's Daughter.

By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK.

The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains.

By A. DAUDET.- The Evangelist.

By J. LEITH DERWENT.

Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers.

"JONAN DOYLE, &c— strange Secrets.

By CHARLES DICKENS. Sketches by Boz. I Oliver Twist.

The Pickwick Papers. | Nicholas Mckleby.

By DICK DONOVAN. The Man-Hunter. I Who Poisoned Hetty

Caught at Last I I Duncan ?

Tracked and Taken. | Man from Manchester.

By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell.

By M, BETHAM-EDWARDS. Kitty. | Felicia.

By EDWARD EGGLESTON— Roxy. By PERCY FITZGERALD. Bella Donna. { 76, Brooke Street.

Polly. | Fatal Zero. Never Forgotten. Second Mrs. Tillotson.| TheLadyof Brantomo.

By R. E. FRANCILLON. Olympia. [ A Real Queen.

One by One. King or Knave ?

Queen Cophetua. I Romances of the Law.

By HAROLD FREDERIC. Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. By CHARLES GIBBON.

A Heart's Problem. The Braes of Yarrow. The Golden Shaft. Of High Degree. Loving a Dream. By Mead and Stream. A Hard Knot. Heart's Delight. The Dead Heart. Blood-Money.

Robin Gray. For Lack of Gold. What will World Say ? In Honour Bound. In Love and War. For the King. In Pastures Green. Queen of the Meadow. Flower of the Forest. Fancy Free.

By WILLIAM GILBERT. Dr. Austin's Guests. | James Duke. The Wizard of the Mountain. By HENRY GREVILLE.— A Noble Woman.

By JOHN HABBERTON. Brueton's Bayou. I Country Luck.

By A. HALLIDAY.— Every-Day Papers. By Lady DUFFUS HARDY.

Paul Wynter's Sacrifice. By THOMAS HARDY. Under the Greenwood Tree. By J. B. HARWOOD.— The Tenth Earl. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. Garth. | Dust. Fortune's Fool. Elllce Quentln. Beatrix Randolph.

Sebastian Strome. Miss Cadogna. Spectre of Camera. Love— or a Name t David Poindexter's Disappearance. Mrs. CASHEL HOEY — The Lover's Creed.

By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. Thornieroft's Model. | The Leaden Casket. Self-Condemned. I That Other Person.

By JEAN INGELOW.— Fated to be Free.

By HARRIETT JAY.

The Dark Colleen. | Queen of Connaught.

By MARK KERSHAW.

Colonial Facts and Fictions.

By R. ASHE KING.

A Drawn Game. | ' The Wearing of the Green.'

Passion's Slave.

By HENRY KINGSLEY.— Oakshott Castle.

By JOHN LEYS.-The Lindsays.

By MARY LINSKILL.

In Exchange for a Soul.

By E. LYNN LINTON.

Patricia Kemball. Atonement of Learn

Dundas. The World Well Lost. Under which Lord? By HENRY W. LUCY— Gideon Fleyce.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, Piccadilly, W. £1

With a Silken Thread. Rebel of the Family. " My Love I " lone. I Faston Carew. Sowing the Wind.

POPULAR TWO-SHILLING NOVELS.

.♦ This is a SELECTION only.-

By justin McCarthy.

Dear Lady Disdain, Waterdale Neighbours. My Enemy's Daughter. A Fair Saxon. MIsb Misanthrope.

By KATHARINE The Evil Eye.

Linley Rochford Donna Quixote. The Comet of a Season Maid of Athens. Camiola.

S. MACQUOID. 1 Lost Rose.

■FULL LISTS of 450 NOVELS free by post By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. Her Mother's Darling. Uninhabited House. The Mystery in Palace Gardens.

By W. H. MALLOCK — The New Republic.

By FLORENCE MARRYAT. Open I Sesame I I Written in Fire. Fighting the Air. | A Harvest of Wild Oats.

By JEAN MIDDLEMASS.

Touch and Go. I Mr. Dorillion.

By Mrs. MOLESWORTH.

Hathercourt Rectory.

J. E. MUDDOCK.— The Dead Man's Secret.

By CHRISTIE MURRAY. A Life's Atonement. iBy the Gate of the Sea. A Model Father. Val Strange. | Hearts.

Joseph's Coat. The Way of the World.

Coals of Fire. Bit of Human Nature.

First Ferson Singular. ICynic Fortune.

Old Blazer's Hero. CHRISTIE MURRAY and H. HERMAN. One Traveller Returns. I Paul Jones's Alias.

By GEORGES OHNET. Doctor Ramean. | A Last Love.

By Mrs. OLIPHANT. Whiteladles. I The Primrose Path.

The Greatest Heiress in England. By OUIDA. Held in Bondage. Pascarel. | Signa.

Btrathmore. In a Winter City.

Cbandos. | Idalia. Ariadne. | Moths.

Tinder Two Flags. Cecil Castlemaine. Tricotrin. | Puck Folle Farine. A Dos of Flanders. Two Wooden Shoes

Friendship I Fipistrello. A Village Commune. Bimbi. I In Maremma. Wanda. | Frescoes. Princess Napraxine. Othmar. ! Guilderoy.

Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos By JAMES PAYN

Lost Sir Massingberd. A Perfect Treasure. Bentinck's Tutor. Murphy's Master. A County Family. At Her Mercy. A Woman's Vengeance. Cecil's Tryst. The Clyflards ol Clyffe. The Family Scapegrace. The Foster Brothers. Found Dead. | Halves. The Best of Husbands. Walter's Word. Fallen Fortunes. What He Cost Her. Humorous Stories. Gwendoline's Harvest. The Talk of the Town. Like Father, Like Son. By E. C. Valentina. Mrs. Lancaster's Rival

A Marine Residence.

Married Beneath Him

Mirk Abbey.

Not Wooed, but Won.

£200 Reward.

Less Black than We're

By Proxy. [Painted.

Under One Roof.

High Spirits.

Carlyon's Tear.

A Confidential Agent.

Some Private Views.

From Exile.

A Grape from a Thorn

For Cash Only.

Kit.

The Canon's Ward.

Holiday Tasks.

Glow-worm Tales.

Mystery of Mirbridge

PRICE.

The Foreigners.

Gerald.

By CHARLES READE. Never too Late to Mend| Course of True Love.

Hard Cash. Peg Wofflngton. Christie Johnstone. Griffith Gaunt. Put Y'rselflnHlsPlaoe The Double Marriage. Love Little, Love Long. Foul Play. Cloister and the Hearth

Autobiog. of a Thief. A Terrible Temptation. The Wandering Heir. A Woman-Hater. A Simpleton. Bingleheart & Doable- face. Good Stories. The Jilt. | Readlana.

Weird Stories. Fairy Water. The Prince of Wales's Garden Party.

By F. W. ROBINSON. Women are Strange. I The Hands of Justice.

By JAMES RUNC1MAN.

Skippers and Shellbacks. | Schools and Scholars

Grace Balmalgn's Sweetheart.

By W. CLARK RUSSELL. Round the Galley Fire. On the FoTs'sle Head. In the Middle Watch. A Voyage to the Cape Book for the Hammock. Jenny Harlowe. Mystery of ■ Ocean Star.' An Ocean Tragedy. By G. A. SALA— Gaslight and Daylight. By JOHN SAUNDERS. Bound to the Wheel. I The Lion ta the Path. One Against the World. I The Two Dreamers. Guy Waterman. By KATHARINE SAUNDERS. Joan Merryweather. | Sebastian. The High Mills. I Heart Salvage.

Margaret and Elizabeth. By GEORGE R. SIMS Rogues and Vagabonds. I Mary Jane Marries. Mary Jane's Memoirs. Tales of To-day. The Ring o' Bells. I Dramas of Life.

By T. W. SPEIGHT. Mysteries Heron Dyke. | By Devious Ways. The Golden Hoop. I Hoodwinked, &c

By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. Hew Arabian Nights. I Prince Otto. By BERTHA THOMAS. Cressida. I Proud Maisie. I The Violin-Playe?.

By WALTER THORNBURY. Tales for the Marines. I Old Stories Re-told

By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. The Way We Live Now The Land-Leagueri

American Senator. Fran Frohmann. Marion Fay. Kept in the Dark.

Mr. Scarborough's

Family. John Caldigate. The Golden Lion.

T. A. TROLLOPE.-Diamond Cut Diamond,

By FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE. Anne Furness. I Mabel's Progress.

Like Ships upon the Sea. By J. T.TROWBRIDGE.— Farnell's Folly.

By MARK TWAIN. Tom Sawyer. i A Pleasure Trip on the

A Tramp Abroad. Continent of Europe.

Stolen White Elephant. Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi.! Prince and the Pauper By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. Mistress Judith. By SARAH TYTLER.

What She CameThrough Beauty and the Beast. Noblesse Oblige. Citoyenne Jacqueline. The Bride's Pass. By J Cavalry Life.

St. Mungo's City. Lady Bell. Disappeared. Buried Diamonds. The Blackhall Ghosts. S. WINTER.

I Regimental Legends.

By H. F. WOOD. The Passenger from Scotland Yard. The Englishman of the Rue Cain. By Lady WOOD. Paul Wynter'a Sacrifice.

By CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY. Rachel Armstrong : Love and Theology.

By EDMUND YATES. The Forlorn Hope. | Land at Last. Castaway.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, Piccadilly, W.

[a

ZEPH : A CIRCUS STORY

ETC.

GEORGE R. SIMS

AUTHOR OF ' DAGONET DITTIES,' ' MARY JANE'S MEMOIRS, ' HOW THE POOR LIVE, ETC.

A NE W EDITION

iLontion

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1892

PREFACE.

These stories have appeared in various periodicals, to the proprietors of which I am indebted for their courtesy in allowing me to reprint them. Among them will be found my first efforts in fiction. I trust the reader will excuse the parental affection which prompted the author of their being to find a snug place in this volume for his firstborn.

CONTENTS.

Zeph : a Story of To-Day — paor

i. groote's circus . . . .1

ii. signor zephio at home . . .6

iii. the queen of the arena . . .10

iv. toroni the agent . . . .14

v. a top floor to let . . . .20

vi. the bounding brothers of bagdad . 26

vii. ' exit the queen ' . . . .31

viii. the father of inez . . .38

IX. PEDRO . . . . .47

X. TORONI'S NOTION . . . .54

XI. A NIGHT OF TERROR . . . .60

XII. PEDRO'S DREAM . . . .68

XIII. THE PARTY OF THREE AT THE PIG AND BAGPIPES . 72

XIV. INEZ WRITES A LETTER . . .77 XV. TORONI IS TROUBLED . .82

XVI. THE GREAT SENSATION . . .85

XVII. BACK AT LAMBETH . . . .92

XVIII. A WREATH OF IMMORTELLES . . .98

Jo Powell's Pilgrimage —

I. ON THE ROAD .... 102

II. BESS ..... 107

III. A STEP ON THE STAIRS . . . Ill

IV. FLIGHT ..... 116

V. ' SAVED FROM THE STORM ' . . . 123

VI. CAUGHT .... 127

VI

CONTENTS.

Urbain and Isette — PAGE

i. the stewardess of the ' flanders ' . . 131

ii. mrs. peters has an idea . , 136

iii. the animals' friend .... 141

iv. mr. tostevor's secret .... 148

v. the mad englishwoman . . . 153

vi. how santa klaus came . . . 160

vii. a strange discovery .... 165

viii. after long years .... 171

My Dog Pickle . . . . .179

A Tale of Italics ..... 194 Mr. Strickland's Black Eye .... 205 Her Eoyal Highness's Husband . . . 215

The Old Lady Opposite .... 234

One Winter Night ..... 246 Jack Palmer's Little Trick .... 258 The Peculiar Nose ; or, The Hangman's Daughter . 272

ZEPH A CIRCUS STORY

CHAPTEK I.

groote's circus.

He was christened Zephaniah, but everybody called him Zeph — that is to say, in familiar conversation. In the evening, when he was dressed in his silken tights and velvet trunks, and his gay spangles glistened in the gas- light, he was known as Signor Zephio !

I put a note of admiration after his name, because I never saw it without one. In the bills he generally had two, and sometimes, when business was good, and ex- travagance warranted by the success of the tour, he was allowed three or four on the double-crown preliminary posters.

' The great Signor Zephio ! ! ! will positively appear in his renowned acrobatic performance every afternoon and evening at Groote's Circus.' So ran the announcement.

Groote's Circus travelled all over the country, and met with varying fortunes. It was not one of those grand affairs which move about with almost imperial state, and charter special trains and special steamers for the accommodation of their army of followers. Groote's Circus had to make up in talent what it lacked in gran-

1

2 ZEPH.

deur, and to give quality in place of quantity Instead of having one hundred horses that could do nothing, Groote's had twelve that could do a great deal ; and instead of having troupes of acrobats, bands of clowns, and galaxies of eminent riders, it not unfrequently hap- pened that the renowned acrobat, the famous clown, and the eminent rider were in bad times one and the same person, and generally that person was Zeph ! He was Groote's right hand. If Groote was away, he made a capital ring-master, and could check the cash and super- intend the business arrangements, lead the fair eques- triennes into the ring to take their encore with the professional hop, skip, jump which are never seen any- where but in a circus, and keep the company in order.

For sometimes the company was inclined to be unruly. Mdlle. Smithini, the barebacked rider, objected to open the programme because the Mayor hadn't arrived ; or Herr Starkmann, who cracked cannon-balls on his head got quarrelling with the green-eyed Hottentot who swal- lowed fire, and would throw the cannon-balls on the Hottentot's head instead of his own ; then the Hottentot would make objectionable remarks in his native language (which, by-the-bye, was Irish), and the fat would be in the fire. But Zeph could put things right directly. A word from him, and the Smithini would pout, perhaps, but she would leap on her bare-backed steed, and play to the Corporation in the two-shilling seats in the absence of the Mayor in the private box ; the Hottentot and the strong man would shake hands and drink out of the same pewter, and all would go merry as a marriage - bell.

And they were merry too, when times were good and

GROOTE'S CIRCUS. 3

full salaries paid. Then they would roam about the country and enjoy the fields in the purest Bohemian fashion before the day's work commenced, and in the evening there was an odour of cooking and tobacco, and a sound of laughter that told of contented minds and continual feasts.

But there were dark days also, when they came to towns where an unexpected strike had commenced, or where, a long run of bad luck having reduced the ex- chequer, hands had to be parted with. It was a blow to all of them when the kindly-hearted proprietor called them together on salary-day, and divided a few pounds on the drumhead, with any amount of apologies in broken English.

It was a dreadful blow to Zeph, for far away in the heart of the mighty city there were two helpless human beings to whom, as well as to himself, that reduced salary meant privation and distress.

It was after a month's continuous bad business, when week after week the receipts had not covered expenses, and the troupe had to take what little the chief could spare, that Zeph one Saturday night went up to his master, and, with a trembling voice and a queer look in his face, told him he wanted ' to say something private to him.' The Hottentot and the Smithini took the hint and strolled away, and Zeph and his master were left alone.

' How long have I been with you, guv'nor?' said Zeph.

' Five year, Zeph. Vy?'

' All that time I've been square and straight, ain't I, and stuck to you fair and honest?'

' Ja wohl, Zeph, my poy. Certainly.'

1—2

4 ZEPH.

' Well, then, now, guv'nor, I'm going to leave you. There, don't pull a long mug like that, or you'll turn me up. I don't like it, I can assure you. But I ain't got only myself to consider. If I was working for myself I wouldn't care a blow. I'd live on baccy, like the rest, and trust to luck. But women can't live on baccy, 'specially a invalid and a little gal. You know how I'm situated, and you'll see as I must be earn in' money somehow.'

' Dat's qvite true, Zeph. Gif me your hand, mein gut Zeph. Vat I shall do vithout you — Ach Himinel! das weiss ich nicht — I don't know ; but I von't not kip you here no longer. You been von wery gut man to me. Gott pless you, Zeph. Ven you go ?'

' Now, guv'nor. I've heard from home to-day ; the missis is worse, and there's only my little lass with her. I ain't seen 'em for two months, and now I can't send 'em enough cash to carry on with, I must go up and get something to do in London at once.'

' Vait a moment, Zeph.'

Herr Groote went into the little ' office ' in the managerial car, and was absent a few moments. When he returned he had a little paper parcel in his hand.

' Take these, Zeph, as a little present to your frau, and don't not open it till you are in the train, or I von't gif it you. Promise.'

Zeph promised, and they shook hands. The old German passed a grimy hand across his eyes, for he looked upon the loss of Zeph as the beginning of the end ; and, besides, he had beaten about the country all winds and weathers with the man, and had conceived a strong liking for the'merry, good-hearted acrobat.

GROOTB'S CIRCUS. 5

' Gott pless you, Zeph, and gut luck, my poy! and ven you vant to come pack to de old show de place is always open for you.'

' Good-bye, guv'nor, and if ever there's a chance you bet, Groote's Circus won't have to ask me twice.'

Then Zeph turned hurriedly away, packed his few traps together, and was off to the station. The Smithini, the Hottentot, and the strong-headed man insisted upon seeing him off; there was a parting drink at the little refreshment counter, and then the up-train came in. ' Any more for Lunnon ?' shouted the porter, lazily ringing a cracked bell.

Yes, there was Zeph, and he was bundled hastily into a third-class carriage, just as the warning whistle sounded, and the train glided along towards the mighty mother of cities, far away in the haze.

Zeph looked out of window and waved his hand to the Smithini, who alternately flourished a small pocket- handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it, and then when the train was out of sight she was so overcome that the Hottentot suggested a pint, and he and the strong man tossed who should pay for it.

And when the Hottentot was the victim, and the pint was produced, they all drank to the health of the de- parted Zeph, and good luck to him.

Vfc Vfv 7[T 7|t 7|*

Whether it was the jolting or not it is impossible to say, but somehow or other on the journey that little paper parcel came open, and Zeph discovered a slip of paper and something else.

This was on the slip : ' Zeph, I know about your frau and schild, and vy you vant gelt so bad. Sell vat you

6 ZEPH.

find here, and gif de gelt to them. It von't be half vot I owes you. Alvays your freund, Rudolf Groote.' And the something else was Herr Groote's watch and chain and his big gold scarf-pin.

CHAPTEE II.

SIGNOR ZBPHIO AT HOME.

It is past eleven on Saturday night, but the side-streets of Lambeth are still full of bustle and life. Lambeth is not a particularly early locality at any time, but on Saturday night it is later than usual. Lambeth house- wives, more especially side-street housewives, are pro- verbially late marketers, a fact which is sometimes attributed to the fact of Lambeth husbands being proverbially late home with the wages. This is a slander on a highly respectable body of gentlemen, and should be met at once. Don't lay all the blame of late shopping on the men, Mr. Easy-Chair Reformer, if you please. The Lambeth ladies, if they are honest, will tell you that they wouldn't go shopping earlier if they could. To enjoy getting in Sunday's dinner, the children must be washed and put to bed and asleep and out of mischief, the front steps must have been scrubbed down, and all the household work finished ; then, if Mrs. Jones meets Mrs. Brown at the same butcher's, they can converse at their leisure, without fear of Tommy falling into the fire, or the master coming home and tumbling over the pail on the stairs, and there will be time for quite a little meeting of old friends at the — well, say at the coffee palace at the corner. Lambeth shops late because Lam- beth likes it, and if meat and vegetables are cheap

SIGN OR ZEPHIO AT HOME. 7

at midnight on Saturday, because they won't keep well over Sunday, by all means let frugal Lambeth upset the proverb of the early bird.

But this is far more digression than is necessary to explain how it was that, on this especial Saturday night, Bonny Street, Lambeth, was all alive. Up at the top of Bonny Street there are stalls, with big, flaring naphtha lamps and big-voiced proprietors, who shout out inces- santly the nature of the articles they vend with various cpaalifying adjectives. Presumably the cabbages, the turnips, and fish, and crockery are too small for the human eye to perceive, and the human ear must there- fore be appealed to.

At one of these stalls a little girl is purchasing a cabbage. The naphtha lamp flares full upon her face, and lights up the waving masses of her auburn hair. It is a lovely face — a face so utterly out of character with its surroundings that if a painter came there for a Lam- beth ' Saturday night,' and were to put it in his picture, the critics would be down on him to a man. Her thin, worn black gown sets off the dazzling whiteness of her bare neck and shoulders. There is a tremendous dignity in the face of this little woman, though. She is only eight, and she is purchasing Sunday's dinner. She evidently thinks the cabbages dear and out of condi- tion, for she turns them over critically, and refuses to be caught by the costerial ' There's a beauty, my little dear ! — the best on the barrer.'

At last the important commission is executed. She selects a cabbage which she considers a fair equivalent for her tightly-clasped penny, puts it carefully in her basket, and turns to go.

8 ZEPH.

And as she runs up Bonny Street home she runs right into the arms of a man who cries, ' "Why, Totty, my pet!' and then smothers her with kisses.

And the man is no other than Signor Zephio, late of Groote's Circus.

'And how's mamma?' he asks anxiously, as Totty, very much damaged about the hair and crushed about the cabbage by the vigour of his embrace, trots home by her father's side.

'Mammy's been bad, daddy — oh, so bad! but she's better to-day — she's better because she knew you'd be home, daddy ; and look what we're going to have for dinner to-morrow, daddy, because you're come home — meat, daddy — meat, and a cabbage !'

Totty opens the basket with a smile of conscious pride, and discloses a small piece of beef, weighing about three pounds.

' Don't it look lovely, daddy '? I'm going to cook it ; mammy can't get out of bed now.'

But daddy doesn't look at the beef. He murmurs, ' Yes, Totty, lovely !' and takes her hand and hurries on. He is anxious to get home and know the worst. They reach the house, and Totty trips up the stairs — right up to the top — to tell the welcome news, and presently Zeph kneels by the little bed in the garret and clasps his wife's wasted form in his powerful arms. Clasps it, but, oh, so gently and tenderly ! and kisses the face upturned to him with a holy reverence, and smooths back the bright black hair from the marble forehead, and tries to read the future in the pallid features on which his eyes are fixed.

Then he breaks down and sobs.

SIGN OR ZEPHIO A T HOME. 9

'Oh, my darling!' he cries, 'why did you not let me know you were so bad ? I would have come sooner.'

' I'm getting better, Zeph,' murmurs the woman in a feeble voice, laying her wasted hand in his ; ' and now you're here, dear, I shall soon get strong again — I know I shall — as well as I ever shall be in this world.'

' Has the doctor been ?'

' Yes. I put off having him as long as I could, for I knew how things were by your letter, Zeph : but last week I was obliged to send.'

' What did he say, Nell ?'

The woman grips his hand, and turns away.

' Tell me what he said, Nell. The suspense is worse than all.'

The woman turns, and, stretching out her arms, draws the man's face down till it rests on the pillow close to her lips.

' Zeph, bear it for my sake. It's bad news, but it's not the worst. I'm to be a burden to you worse than I have been.'

' No burden to me, my darling.'

' Zeph, you can't hide the truth from me. But for me and my constant illness you could live well on what you earn, and I've been so little help to you ; and now ' — her eyes fill with tears, and she presses her feverish lips to her husband's — ' and now, Zeph, I shall be able to do nothing at all. / shall never be able to leave my bed again.'

For a moment the shock told on the acrobat, and speech failed him, but presently, with a mighty effort, he shook the horror from him, and spoke out in a cheery voice.

'Never mind, my darling,' he cried; 'so long as God

io ZEPH.

spares your life to me, that's all I ask. I can work and earn enough to keep us all ; and if I get a good engage- ment in town you can have the luxuries you've wanted so long.'

'I shan't want them long, Zeph.'

' Oh yes, you will. Come, cheer up. I shall be with you all day now, and you'll soon pick up.'

Totty, poor forgotten Totty, had listened to the con- versation, and now crept up and took her father's hand.

' Daddy,' she whispers, ' and if you get ill, like mammy, I can work for you both, can't I, daddy ?'

Zeph stooped down and kissed the child, and took her on his knee.

' Pray God, my darling, that day may never come.'

CHAPTEK III.

THE QUEEN OF THE ARENA.

Let us leave Zeph for awhile alone in the Lambeth garret with his wife and child, and hark back some six years.

It is a gala night at the circus in a large provincial town. The circus is a permanent building of wood, and has been occupied for the past six months by one of the leading troupes of the kingdom. To-night the season closes with the usual benefit of the proprietor, and every available seat is occupied. The great feature of the evening is the daring flight of the Queen of the Arena over half a dozen five-barred gates. The Queen does not sit comfortably on a saddle like an ordinary mortal, and let the horse do the jumping. She stands on the bare back of a fiery and snorting thoroughbred, and spurns both

THE QUEEN OF THE ARENA. u

saddle and reins. She is a beautiful -woman, with waving black hair, artistically set off by a coquettishly worn rose ; and as she dashes into the ring, mounted on a prancing and glossy-coated steed, she is greeted with a storm of applause.

The clown cracks his merry jokes, and the ring-master cracks his whip, while the Queen rides gaily round, tak- ing a sort of preliminary canter, and then the great per- formance commences.

With a light touch of the whip and a musical ' Gee up ' the Queen urges her steed into a quicker pace. Faster and faster he dashes round, while his rider, erect on his back, pirouettes, and skips as gracefully as though she were practising her steps on a carpeted floor. The music plays louder and louder, and presently the assistants rush in with the five-barred gates. It is a terrific feat, but the Queen never falters. With a smile, half of pride, half of defiance, she dashes over the dangerous obstacles, and maintains her balance when it seems to the breath- less audience that she must inevitably be flung to the ground. Five times do they gallop round the ring, and take the perilous leaps, and then the music ceases, the five-barred gates are taken away, and the audience give vent to their suppressed feelings in showers of applause.

The Queen bows and smiles, and, leaping off her horse, runs out of the ring bowing, and executing the little pirouette so fashionable with lady professional riders. But the audience are not satisfied. They insist upon having the Queen on again. It is a gala night, and the last night of the season, and the audience must be humoured. The Queen bounds into the arena once more, this time led in by a smiling gentleman in full

12 ZEPH.

ring costume, who is instantly recognised by the audi- ence as the famous acrobat who appeared earlier in the evening, and who had changed his clothes in order to swell the ranks of the 'permanent staff of assistants.' In trots the fiery steed again, two grooms apparently being necessary to restrain his headlong career, and with a bound the Queen leaps upon his back and gallops round. This time there are no five-barred gates. The leaping is to be through paper hoops. The smiling gentleman, who is evidently interested in the lady's performance, gives a few directions, the assistants mount and hold the hoops, and the Queen leaps through them one after the other as easily as a schoolboy would jump across a gutter. But the performance is not over even yet. The smiling gentleman now mounts on the side of the ring, and produces a tiny paper hoop, so small that you would hardly think the Queen could wriggle through it, much less jump. There is a buzz of astonishment, and then a hush, for the ring-master has come to the centre and is speaking — ' Ladies and gentlemen, — The Queen of the Arena will conclude her marvellous per- formance by leaping head first through this small paper hoop while the horse is at full gallop. It is a feat on which she has been personally complimented by all the crowned heads of Europe. Are you ready?' This last to the Queen. A nod and a smile. A smacking of whips and triumphant music. Forward dashes the steed, the smiling gentleman holds the hoop out, the audience sit in silent and breathless suspense, and the Queen joins her hands above her head, leaps in the air, and dives at the centre of the hoop.

And just at that second a little child who was in a

THE QUEEN OF THE ARENA. 13

woman's arms in the front row leans over and falls right under the clattering hoofs of the galloping horse. The pleasant gentleman sees it, and starts forth with a wild cry, and in that second the Queen of the Arena has dived at the tiny hoop, been caught by it, and has fallen forward against the wooden side of the ring with a dull thud that turns the strongest faint to hear.

The women shriek, the men leap into the circus, and confusion ensues. ' She's killed !' cry the women. ' It's a shame!' say the men. ' Such performances ought to be stopped!' And the more respectable portion of the audience make for the doors.

But amid the riot and the uproar one figure arrests the attention of all. It is the pleasant gentleman who held the hoop. The child has been rescued unhurt.

It was his child.

But the woman lies speechless and bleeding, and apparently lifeless, at his feet.

She was his wife.

'Oh, my darling !' he moans, ' look at me, speak to me ! I have killed you ! The child fell, and I feared the horse's hoofs would crush it. And now I have killed you, my darling ! Speak to me !'

A doctor pushes his way through the crowd and examines the fallen Queen.

' She lives,' he says presently; ' but she is dreadfully injured. Carry her away.'

*>i/ Si. Si. Si.

•T- 'T7 '!' *F

An hour later, when the lights were out, and the once gay circus was wrapped in darkness and gloom, the doctor sent for the poor acrobat and told him the worst.

14 ZEPH.

With care, great care, his wife would live, but her spine was injured, and she would never be able to ride again. It was possible the injury would grow gradually worse, and — well, it was best to conceal nothing — it was possible she might at last become a helpless cripple, unable to move hand or limb.

Down in the straw of the rude stable where she had been carried the acrobat knelt beside the senseless form of his wife, and moved his lips in prayer — asking Heaven to spare her life for his sake and for the child's.

The Queen of the Arena was the wife of Zeph the acrobat, and the child was Totty.

CHAPTEE IV

TOEONI THE AGENT.

Fouk years passed away after the Queen of the Arena was hurled from her prancing steed, never to ride again. Carefully nursed, watched day and night with womanly devotion by the acrobat, her husband, she slowly recovered sufficient strength to be moved, and when she was well enough she was taken up to London, and duly installed in the Lambeth lodgings. Not in the garret she occupies now, though, for in those days Zeph was well off. He and his wife together had commanded big salaries, for she was the finest rider in the three kingdoms, and her name in the bills was a certain attraction. They had the parlours then, and a little room besides, where baby Totty laughed and screamed and stamped her little feet when mamma was too ill to bear the noise. A little girl hired in the neighbourhood

TORONI THE AGENT. 15

was Totty's nurse and companion in this little nursery, but on the days when Zeph was at home he would often make the third at a game of romps.

Here, when the poor bruised and suffering Queen of the Arena, worn out with pain, dropped off into a fitful and feverish sleep, would the acrobat come, and, taking his baby-daughter on his knee, talk nonsense to her and toss her in the air, till the little creature crowed again with delight.

One day Toroni, the agent who procured engagements for Zeph, and was himself a trainer of acrobats, called at the Lambeth lodgings on business. Zeph was in the nursery, and the agent saw him there. After the matter on which he had called was settled, the conversation turned upon domestic affairs, and papa picked up Totty to give her a ride on his knee, that the agent might see her pretty ways.

Up and up and up went Totty, screaming with delight, and Zeph, without thinking, began the old time-honoured song of nursery equestrianism :

Ride a cock-horse

To Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady ride on a fine horse,

With rings on her fingers

And bells on her toes, And she shall have music wherever she goes.

Suddenly the song stopped, the acrobat's eyes filled with tears, and he put the laughing baby gently down. ' To see a fine lady ride on a fine horse !' The whole scene rushed back upon his mind in a second. He saw his beautiful wife spring into the saddle amid the applause of the multitude. He saw the dancing lights, he heard the music and the laughter and the shouting, and then

1 6 ZEPII.

he heard the sickening crash, and saw her lying bruised and helpless at his feet.

The agent, noticing his abstracted manner, hazarded a remark to break the silence.

It was just the remark that an agent would make to an acrobat who had a pretty child. ' Do you mean to bring the young un up to the profession ?'

Zeph turned in a moment and rose from his seat with a fierce look in his eyes. ' Bring her up to the profes- sion ! I'd rather see my Totty dead and in her grave.'

' Nonsense, man !'

' Nonsense ! Isn't the mother's life enough ? Would you have me have the child's blood on my head as well ?'

Toroni shrugged his shoulders. ' My dear fellow, if everyone talked like that, where should I be ? You'll alter your mind by-and-by. Besides, it's in the blood ; the child will take to it herself if you leave her alone.'

' Look here, Toroni. If I thought so, I'd pray to Heaven night and day that she might be taken now.'

' Well, we shall see. Good-bye.'

Toroni then shook hands with the acrobat, and went his way. But at the corner of the street he stopped and pulled out his memorandum-book. ' Zeph's young un — watch.'

That was all he wrote.

And if Zeph had seen him he would have struck him down where he stood.

He would have known what it meant.

* * * * *

The days passed on, and Zeph's London engagements fell through, and he had to go into the country with

TORONI THE AGENT. 17

Groote. Times got bad, and the invalid had to be moved up flight after flight in the Lambeth lodgings to meaner rooms and lower rents, till at last the Ultima Thule of respectable poverty — the garret — was reached. There we saw them on the night that Zeph returned from his last tour with Groote, and there they lived for many and many a week after — lived as the poor do live, battling for existence ; for Zeph failed to get an engage- ment, and the proceeds of Herr Groote' s watch and chain soon came to an end.

The invalid, unable to move hand or foot, lay helpless and in agony all through the livelong day, while Zeph wandered abroad and endeavoured to get a turn at one of the halls. Everywhere he failed, for the market was overstocked with talent, and his business was not suitable to the entertainment in vogue.

In desperation he determined to go into the country again. Better that than watch his wife dying before his eyes for lack of the bare necessaries of life. There again he failed, for the times were exceptional, and all over the country the travelling troupes were shortening their hands. Poor old Groote, his last resource, dissolved his own company, and went abroad as agent in advance to a more prosperous concern a week before Zeph wrote to him. The letter came back to Zeph marked ' Gone away — Address not known,' and the acrobat felt that he

had lost his only friend.

*****

One day, while Zeph was out looking for employment — he would have taken anything now, for the wolf was at the door — Toroni, his old agent, came to see him. Totty answered his knock.

2

1 8 ZEPH.

' Is Signor Zephio at home ?'

' No ; daddy's out.'

' Daddy ! What, are you Zeph's little girl that I used to nurse on my knee ? Why, how you've grown ! What do you do?'

' I keep house for mammy ; she's ill.'

' Yes, I know, But where is your father ?'

' He's out ; always out. He can't get anything to do now, and he comes home and cries, and mammy cries ; and, oh, sometimes I wish I was a big girl, and I could do something, and then they could be quite happy again.'

Toroni looked at the child steadfastly.

' Would you like to earn money, and be able to pay for nice things for your mother and give your father bright gold sovereigns ?'

Totty clapped her hands with delight at the notion.

' Oh, how could I do that ?' she said.

Still Toroni kept his eyes fixed on the child. He noticed her lithe, supple form, he noticed her glorious eyes and her wavy auburn hair, and he felt that a fortune was within his grasp.

' Do you go out at all in the daytime ? Can your mother spare you to leave the house ?'

' Yes ; after I've tidied up, and after I've given father his breakfast and he's gone out, mother always tells me to go into the street for an hour and get the air. She says it isn't good for me to be all day in the hot, close room with her.'

' Capital ! Now, my little lady, promise me not to say a word to anyone, and I'll tell you how you can help papa and mamma. Promise !'

' I promise. Now tell me, please.'

TO RON I THE AGENT. 19

The child looked up at Toroni with a glad, eager look, and almost held her breath to listen.

' Well, if you can come to my place for two hours every day I will teach you to be one of the lovely little girls that you've seen when your father's taken you to the circus. You know, the pretty little girls who swing in the air and are covered in gold and dressed in lovely velvet. Wouldn't you like to be one of them ?'

' Oh, I should ! But mayn't I tell mammy and daddy? Oh, I'm sure they would be so pleased !'

' No, you must not tell them yet — not till you are able to do all the wonderful things, and then you shall.' ' But why mayn't I tell them now ?' ' Because perhaps your father wouldn't let you come to be a pretty lady. Come, keep it a great secret, and meet me here at the door in three days' time, at ten, and I'll show you where I live, and where you are to come every day to learn to be one of the pretty ladies.'

Totty promised, and Toroni went away, well satisfied with his morning's work.

' I must get Zeph out of the way for a bit, or he'll twig something,' he said. 'Hum! what can I do with him ?'

The next morning Zeph received a letter from Toroni, offering him a three months' engagement with a circus in France.

The terms were too good to be refused. He could send money over now, and though he could not be with them he would know that his dear ones would not want. He accepted the engagement, bade his wife be of good heart, and the time would soon slip by. He kissed his blue-eyed little daughter, and bade her be a good girl to

2—2

2o ZEPH.

mammy and take care of her, and went down the stairs of the Lambeth lodging and over the seas to France.

CHAPTEE V

A TOP FLOOR TO LET.

The three months sped away, and every week brought money from Zeph to his wife and child. Totty had kept her promise to Toroni, and every day she had stolen away to the agent's house, and gone through her course of training. Never was there an apter pupil than Totty, and she took to the business from the first.

The agent rubbed his hands. It was in the blood- He had said so from the first. He should coin money with the little one, for she was quick and clever, and she would grow up into a beautiful girl.

There was one awkward part of the business, and that was Zeph. Toroni remembered what he had said to him years ago — ' that he would rather see his child in the grave than following the profession.'

There were other girls and boys who were learning with Totty, some of them younger than she was — little wee things, who were sold before they could well walk to Toroni, the trainer.

The man had two classes of pupils — those whom he trained and leased to acrobats, in the ordinary way, to make up the fashionable ' family ' entertainment (the great Magnetti family, for instance, was composed of a Smith, two Joneses, and a Brown) ; and the pupils he trained and kept to go starring with himself when their education should be complete. He had great hopes of

A TOP FLOOR TO LET. 21

Totty. At present she would only do for an infant phenomenon, but in a few years' time, when she had grown into a lovely girl, he knew he would be able to make a sensation entertainment of her, fire her from a cannon, drop her from a balloon, or send her flying through the air in some highly novel and exciting manner yet to be devised. The trapeze at present was Totty's/orte, and as she went through her first attempts at the professor's gymnasium, he was struck with her fearlessness and grace. One or two falls she had, but the net was always in use at practice time, and very soon she was so proficient and confident that she was put to the more dangerous and difficult feats.

At the end of the three months Zeph was offered a further engagement, on good terms, to go on to Spain with the French circus company, and with the remem- brance of the difficulty he had in London, he accepted it. His wife got a friend to write and let him know that she and Totty were all right, that she received his remit- tances regularly, and that she was no worse in her health than when he was at home.

This was hardly true.

The poor creature had been getting slowly and slowly weaker. She knew it herself, but she would not drag her husband home to witness her sufferings. When he was out he was earning money for them and for himself. At home he might get no employment, and his presence could not save her. She had a dim, undefined kind of hope that Providence would so shape affairs that at the last her hand would lie in his, and his voice would sound again in her ears before the weak, flickering flame of her life went utterly out.

22 ZEPH,

But it was not to be.

Zeph had been away five months, when a very great change took place. Totty had been out on her secret errand, and stopped longer than usual. She ran home in a hurry, fearing that she would be questioned as to where she had been.

Outside the door she paused in astonishment. She could hear her mother talking in a loud voice, and she wondered who could be with her, for visitors to the garret were few.

She pushed the door open gently, and could see no one. Only her mother, with a flushed, hot face, lay on the bed, waving her thin arms in the air and talking aloud.

Totty ran to the bed ; her little heart fluttered with fear.

' What's the matter, mammy?'

The sick woman turned her eyes towards the child, but no look of recognition came into them.

' Houp la !' she shouted. ' Soh over ! Good horse ! Zeph, give an eye to Johnson to-night with the hoop. He's been drinking again. He nearly had me over last night. Hey ! hey ! hey ! Faster, faster, faster ! Higher with the hoop ! Higher, do you hear? High with it, up to the skies, and let me leap. The Queen of the Arena leaps over the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and all on her bare-backed steed. How do I look to-night, Zeph ? Hark at the applause ! They are calling me on again. I see the blaze of light ; I hear the roar of a thousand voices as I leap upon my coal-black steed. The music clashes as I ride in triumph, and you are there, Zeph, my own, and I can see how proud you are of me to-night. Ah,

A TOP FLOOR TO LET. 23

there's Totty ! Totty in the front row with the nurse. Look at her, Zeph ! Baby can see me, and is stretching out her little hands to mammy. The little dear ! Where's the hoop ? Am I ready ? Yes. Start the music. Houp la ! Off we go.'

' Mammy dear, what is it ? Are you ill ? Let me run for someone ; let me fetch a doctor,' cries Totty, trembling and terrified.

' The doctor ! Ah, yes, you're the doctor. Oh, my back, my back ; that's where the pain is, and here at my side. I fell and hurt myself just now, doctor. Zeph was holding the hoop, and just as I was going to leap, Totty, my little Totty, got over the edge of the circus, and fell right under the feet of the horse. And Zeph saw it, and moved the hoop, and so I fell. But the child is safe. Thank God for that ! Thank God for that !'

There was no trembling now. Clasping her mother's hand, Totty listened with breathless attention. Little by little the ghastly truth dawned upon her that she, Totty, was the cause of her mother's accident — that she had crippled her mother for life.

She did not cry — she was too horror-stricken for that — but her little heart seemed filled to bursting, and her face went deadly pale. She had never heard the story before. Hearing it as she did now, she never for a moment doubted its truth. Young as she was, she had been associated all her life with the stern realism of poverty, and her intelligence was matured by constant association with people whose lives are open books, where all is written in black and white. Totty knew that her mother was delirious, and that in her delirium she was but acting again that terrible scene in her life drama

24 ZEPH.

which had dashed fortune from her grasp and left her a helpless cripple evermore.

And so she, Totty, was the cause of it all ! She had maimed her mother for life and dragged her father down to poverty ! Why didn't the galloping horse trample the life out of her ? Why was she spared to be a helpless little mortal, and to live with the thought of the terrible mischief she had wrought always before her ? Helpless, and a burden on those she had brought to poverty. Help- less, and a burden ! No. For a moment the colour came back to her cheeks, and Totty's tearful eyes glistened with joy- She need not be a burden ; she could go out in the world and earn money. Only that day Toroni had told her that if she would go abroad with him he would pay her to go through the little tricks on the trapeze and the parallel bar which she could do so well.

She had hesitated. She didn't know what to do about her mother. She knew that the money she could earn would buy many comforts that could not be had now.

Her head began to get so full of thought that she grew excited and didn't know what to do first. She must fetch someone to her mother — there was no doubt of that. She would run and ask the doctor to come and see her, and then she would go and see Toroni. The lodger on the floor below was a kind motherly woman, and promised to sit with Totty's mother while the child

went for the doctor.

*****

The doctor stood by the bedside of the Queen of the Arena. He had attended her before, and knew her history. He stayed a quarter of an hour, and spoke long

A TOP FLOOR TO LET. 25

and anxiously with the friendly lodger and in a low tone, so that Totty could not catch what they said.

Presently the doctor came across to the child and laid his hand kindly on her head.

' My dear, they tell me your father is abroad, and likely to be for some time.'

'Yes.'

' Now, I must tell you, and I think you will understand me, that as your mamma is now it would be much better if she could go into a nice place where she could be care- fully nursed. I can get her into such an institution at once, and it is very necessary that she should not be left here with a little nurse like you any longer ; but we are wondering what we are to do about- '

' About me ?' suggested Totty.

' Exactly, my dear ; about you. Have you any friends who would let you live with them till ' — the doctor hesi- tated a moment, and then stammered out — ' till your mother is better ?'

Totty thought a moment — and only a moment. In that brief space of time she had considered her future life and decided.

' Mammy, in this nice place that you speak of, will want many things that she can't have without money, won't she ?'

'A strange question, child. Yes.'

' Then, if you please, will you write down the name of this nice place where mammy is going to ? I have friends who will let me live with them. They will come and fetch me away whenever I like.'

Two days afterwards there was a bill in the lower window of the Lambeth lodgings, and passers-by read that a top floor was to let.

26 ZEPH.

Totty had accepted the only shelter open to her, and Toroni, the agent, had secured his prey.

And, by a strange coincidence, from the day that the bill went up in the window no letters came from Zeph, although Toroni sent week after week to inquire.

CHAPTEE YI.

THE BOUNDING BROTHERS OF BAGDAD.

The circus which Zeph had joined in France was one of those gigantic affairs which travel all over Europe with an army of followers. Zeph owed his engagement not so much to his talent as to the strong recommendation of Toroni. He was not a star in this company. He was simply one of the Bounding Brothers of Bagdad. One bounding brother was German, and another was French, and Zeph had become a member of the family on account of the third brother, an American, having retired from the bounding business. This third brother had gone into the public-house line with a young widow who had fallen in love with him while he was standing on his head at the Agricultural Hall, Islington. Some- one was necessary to fill his vacant place at once, as in the Bagdad performance three were a company and two were none, and just at the right moment Toroni was written to and sent out Zeph.

Zeph got on with his brothers very well at first — the pay was good, and the performance not particularly dangerous. But by-and-by the manager of the circus, an Englishman, began to take a fancy to Zeph. He found him, as C4roote had done, a good-hearted, hard-

THE BOUNDING BROTHERS OF BAGDAD. 27

working fellow, an acrobat and a gentleman, and Zeph began to drop in for good things. He was consulted on little business matters, he was asked to the manager's house, he had cigars with the ring-master, and the grooms called him ' sir.' The other bounding brothers noticed this, as they were bound to do, and they didn't like it. The brotherly love did not continue ; it grew small by degrees and beautifully less. The German brother uttered vague threats in his native language and ground his teeth, and the French brother gesticulated and glared when Zeph's name was mentioned in a manner which prompted the tight-rope lady to remark to the lady trick-act rider that she was sure the French brother was in love with her, and was jealous because she had allowed Zeph to chalk her soles the night of her benefit.

Zeph took no notice at all of the altered tone of the bounders ; he guessed they were a little jealous, and tried by extra friendliness and courtesy to wear the feeling down. Finding his efforts in vain, he accepted the inevitable and held his tongue. Now there are a thousand little ways in which one bounding brother can annoy the other. It was part of the Bagdad per- formance for a pyramid to be raised. The German would jump on to Zeph's shoulders, then the Frenchman would take a long run and bound up somehow on to the German's shoulders. When the applause had died away, the middle man would drop out, and down would come the Frenchman on to Zeph's head. It was a feat only acquired by long practice, but once learned it was easy enough. Zeph being bottom man all through, the brothers had plenty of chances to make his work harder

28 ZEPH.

than it need be. They would hit him accidentally in the back as they mounted, and they would alight on his head in a vicious rather than an artistic manner. At last they got so unfriendly that the success of the per- formance was imperilled, and one night there was a palpable effort on the part of the Frenchman to do Zeph an injury and disable him. Then the long-suffering acrobat felt it was time to speak. Disabled and incap- able of going through the performance, his place would have to be filled up.

This was exactly what his brothers wanted, and Zeph saw it.

He knew what it would mean to him. He remembered that not only his own fate was in the hands of these men, but the fate of his crippled wife and his little child. In justice to them he felt bound to protect himself. He went straight to the manager and told his story. The manager was indignant, sent for the offending brothers, and cautioned them that if such a thing occurred again he would put them out of the bill, and let Zeph do an acrobatic entertainment all by himself. The foreigners bowed to the manager and bowed to Zeph. They declared that it was all a mistake, that ' ce cher Signor Zephi ' was their idol, that they worshipped him, that if anything happened to him they would die of grief, and that they were desolated to think that he could ever have suspected them of such behaviour ; at any rate, they would be most careful for the future.

Zeph expressed himself satisfied, and the manager agreed to let the matter drop.

The German cleared his throat and offered his hand, which Zeph took. The Frenchman showed his white

THE BOUNDING BROTHERS OF BAGDAD. 29

teeth, and shot under his eyelids a look that would have alarmed its recipient could he have interpreted it.

' Get rid of us pour ce Monsieur Zephio ? ve sail see !' said the Frenchman, in that mixture of languages which circus life entails. ' Attendez un pea, and ve sail see who vill be got rid of.'

But he said all this to himself. He pretended to the German that it would be better to live in friendship with Zeph, or the manager might keep his word. The German believed him sincere, accepted his advice, and followed it, and from that moment he and Zeph were friends.

But the Frenchman, though openly cordial, nourished a secret scheme of vengeance, which he soon had an opportunity of putting into execution.

One night after the performance was over — it was the last night of their stay in a Spanish town — the principal members of the troupe accepted an invitation to sup at the cabaret of an ex-professional who had settled down in the neighbourhood. It was a ' bachelor ' entertain- ment, and was kept up till an early hour in the morning ; in fact, until so early that several of the company stayed and slept on the benches until it was time to go to the station. The rendezvous for the troupe was seven at the railway-station, and all their baggage had been sent on beforehand, and their lodgings settled for in order to avoid delay. At six the sleepers rose, visited the pump, and indulged in an alfresco entertainment of the limited character usual on the Continent, and set out. Zeph slept heavily, and was the last to leave. The road from the cabaret lay across some fields and through a narrow lane into the town, and so on to the station.

30 ZEPH.

When Zeph reached the lane he found the Frenchman waiting for him. The others had gone on and were out

of sight.

*****

Half an hour afterwards the manager arrived at the station to take the tickets. On the roll being called only Zeph was absent.

' Where's Zeph ?' asked the manager ; ' he's generally so punctual. We've only got five minutes.'

' He said he'd forgotten something at his lodgings, and ran back,' volunteered the Frenchman.

The bell rang, the manager grew anxious ; but no Zeph appeared.

At last everyone had taken his seat, and the train was on the point of starting.

Still no Zeph.

The whistle blew, the engine snorted, and puffed its way from the station out into the open country. As it left the platform the manager flung a ticket from the window to the station-master, and begged him to give it to Zeph, whom he described, and send him on by the next train.

The next day the troupe gave their first performance in a town fifty miles distant, and the Bounding Brothers of Bagdad bounded into the ring and went through their performance.

In the bill they were described as the ' three ' brothers ; the audience noticed that there were only two. From that day to this no member of the troupe ever knew what became of the third Bounding Brother of Bagdad, Signor Zephio.

Only the Frenchman grinned and showed his white

'EXIT THE QUEEN: 31

teeth when the German reminded him that once the manager had talked of getting rid of them.

CHAPTEE VII.

'exit the queen.'

Mr. Flox sat in his little back-parlour, in a street running off the Blackfriars Koad. Mr. Flox was a portly, merry- looking little man, on the wrong side of sixty, but evidently on the right side of Mrs. Flox ; for Mrs. Flox was asking him if his grog was strong enough, and I take it that when a wife asks her husband if his grog is strong enough they are on the very best possible terms. As in the earlier matrimonial days the ' Is your tea agreeable, darling ?' tells of the billing and cooing of love's young dream, so in the autumn of wedded bliss does the tender solicitude of the lady for the strength of the Irish hot speak to the initiated of the unruffled surface of the domestic ocean.

' My dear,' answers Mr. Flox, ' I will undertake to say that Nature singled you out for me as the one woman who would know exactly how I liked it mixed.'

Mr. Flox's favourite expression is, ' I undertake.' He undertakes to say, and he undertakes to do, and he undertakes to be. The weakness is allowable in Mr. Flox, for he is an undertaker by trade as well as by profession. Mrs. Flox smiles approvingly at her hus- band's remark, and calls out to the apprentice not to knock so loud, as ' the governor can hear him.'

This last expression requires, perhaps, some explana- tion, in an age which takes nothing for granted, and

32 ZEPH.

refuses the sun the privilege of shining without knowing the exact why and the exact wherefore, and insists on having it in black and white, and then raises objections on the most trivial scientific points. Mrs. Flox informed the apprentice that the governor could hear him, because she was in the habit of sitting in the back-parlour during many hours of the day, when the knocking of the appren- tice was by no means so self-assertive.

Whether the coffins that he was engaged on during Mr. Flox's absence were of a softer and gentler nature, and accepted nails as clever boys do ideas, without their being hammered in, Mrs. Flox was not prepared to say ; but she did notice that directly Mr. Flox's shadow crossed the shop-door they required a vast expenditure of sound in their construction.

The apprentice, thus admonished, informed Mrs. Flox, under his breath, that she thought she knowed a lot, she did, and left off nailing a ' workhouse ' to sort out a tin plate for a cheap ' walking,' and then hunted about for his bread and cheese and onions, which he had popped out of sight somewhere when the governor came in, but wasn't quite sure whether it was in the infant's blue and silver nails, lined white satin, or old Mrs. Jones's elm and black cloth. The apprentice had a weakness for putting his refreshment into his work instead of putting his heart there, and the best job old Flox ever had was nearly spoilt by this pernicious habit. When the rich publican's best oak-polished, Early English plate and handles was taken home, it was found to contain the fried fish which the young gentleman had purchased on the previous evening, and had hunted for ever since.

The apprentice having subsided into quietness, Mrs.

' EXIT THE QUEEN: 33

Flox broached the subject to her lord of which she had been full all day.

' Are you busy to-morrow, Flox ?'

' No, dear — only two to Highgate and one to Ilford.'

' Flox, we ain't had a day out this two years. I want you to take me to Eosherville to-morrow.'

Mr. Flox thought a minute.

' Well, Jones ' — Jones was the head man — ' can manage without me ; they're none of 'em up to much — but why to-morrow ?'

' The Smiths are going ; their gal's married in the morning, and they wants us to join the party.'

' Well, I don't know nothing to prevent it. I'll say " Yes." By Jove, I forgot, though !'

' Forgot what ? Now, don't disappoint me arter all, Flox.'

' There's Toroni's job to-morrow, and I promised him faithful I'd see to it myself.'

' And who's Toroni, pray, that he should come between a husband a-taking his wife out once in two years ?'

' My dear, Toroni's a rich gentleman. He owns them there hakerabats.'

' Flox, you ain't going to disappoint the wife of your bosom for a nasty low hakerabat ?'

Mr. Flox's face fell. " I'm afraid, my love, I must. I've promised him faithful.'

' Who is it as must have you and can't have Jones, I should like to know? His hit a Hempress or a Queen?'

Mr. Flox's eyes twinkled at the prospect of a joke. He took a sip at his Irish, and then said solemnly :

' It's a Queen, my dear.'

3

34

ZEPII.

' Get out ! queens ain't likely to come down Black- friars Poad to be buried; not but what' — and here Mrs. Flox remembered the line on the circular which it was her proud privilege to enclose at certain intervals in a taking envelope and address to the inhabitants of the locality — ' not but what we could bury them as well as them fal-lal fellows at the West, as is all black kid and hatbands and sherry wine for the mourners, and werry little o' anything for the party most interested.'

Still Mr. Flox's eye twinkled, and he repeated, ' It's a Queen, my dear — the Queen of the Arena.' The in- dignant look in Mrs. Flox's face died out.

' The Queen of the Arena ? Poor thing ! — poor thing ! Is she dead at last, then'? Well, it must ha' been a 'appy release. Who's a-buryin' of her ?'

' Toroni, the agent.'

' But he ain't a friend in any way, is he ?'

' He's a friend in need, at any rate. She died in the hospital ; and he's given the orders to do everything proper and decent.'

' But where's her husband ?'

' Well, it's rather a queer go about her husband. He went out with a circus to France and then to Spain, and no livin' soul ain't heard on him for six months. Toroni thinks he's dead. He's advertised for him in the Knt, and made no end of inquiries, but he can learn nothing. There's a little gal, too, poor little thing ! — as bonny a lass as you'd meet with in a day's march. Poor little soul ! she'll have a rough time of it now.'

' AVhat's Toroni going to do with her, then ")-

' lie don't know I lc says some kind lady has offered t<> take her abroad and adopt her.'

' EXIT THE QUEEN: 35

' A good thing for the child if it's true,' said Mrs. Flox, shaking her head ; ' but I has my doubts about gals going abroad to be adopted. Why can't they adopt her without taking her to them horrid wicked furrin parts ?'

It is Mrs. Flox's firm idea that foreign parts are the home of all that is disreputable and heathenish ; and that no man, woman, or child can touch foreign parts without being defiled.

Mr. Flox, having been once on a cheap excursion to Boulogne, defended foreign parts from those very grave charges most vigorously, and as before the conversation is finished the apprentice is putting up the shutters, and will presently shut Mr. and Mrs. Flox in among the unfinished coffins, we had better get out into the street, to avoid passing the night with such unpleasant surroundings.

**fc Jj* J|^ ^j£ *fi

On the morrow Mr. Flox fulfilled his promise to Toroni, and personally conducted the funeral of the Queen of the Arena.

Totty and the agent were the only mourners. She who had lived for years in the gay bustle and whirl of the circus world — she whose every movement had been watched with bated breath — she who had won the applause of thousands, and ridden a Queen among a multitude hoarse with the constant shouting of her name, went to her last home followed only by a sobbing child. Toroni had a reason for going. He didn't like it, but he didn't care to lose sight of Totty now ; and he took a certain weight off his conscience in paying for the funeral. It was part of the blood-monev for the

3—2

36 ZEPI-f.

child. An elderly clergyman, ' retained on the premises,' gabbled the funeral service as though he were calling back an invoice at a draper's entering-desk ; a rough man in corduroys, caked with the clay of a hundred graves, flung a lump of mud on to the coffin lid, then all was over; and the clergyman shuffled back to the chapel, wondering whether he'd remembered in the morning to tell his wife he should like a bloater for his tea.

You who would say this picture is overdrawn or un- true, go, if you have the courage, to any of our great cemeteries, and watch the heartless manner in which ' our dear departed brother ' or ' sister ' is shovelled into a hole full of water and filth ; listen to the burlesque on the beautiful Burial Service which is considered good enough as a God-speed to that mysterious far-off land which none can picture, none define. I hold there is nothing deserving such respect and reverence as the dead. The poorer and the more helpless they were in life, the greater should be the last honours we pay them at the close of their pilgrimage. I would not bury a dog of mine as hundreds of human beings are buried daily in this Christian land of ours.

Child as she was, Totty felt how cold and cruel was the treatment of her dead mother. The priest and the sexton, and the gaping nursemaids and idlers who love a funeral as they love a Punch-and-.Tudy show, saw only a wooden box. Totty saw through the lid, and beheld the pale dead face of her only friend, her mother. She saw the closed eyes and the cold blue lips that had kissed her at the last, and prayed Cod to shield the orphan child cast alone and friendless on the heartless world.

' EXIT THE QUEEN: 37

The Queen had pined and pined and waited for news of the absent Zeph, and when the months went by and no letters came she felt that he was dead. Then she turned her face to the wall and went to seek him.

5JC 5JC JfC *fZ ?p

Totty lingered by the grave after the idlers had left. ' Oh, mammy, mammy !' she wailed ; ' daddy's gone, and now you're gone, and poor Totty's left alone ! Oh, why didn't the big horse put his feet on me and crush me when I fell ? — then you would have been alive, and daddy would have been with you !'

The child's agony overcame her, and she fell on her knees on the muddy turf, rocking herself to and fro in a paroxysm of grief.

Toroni took her hand and led her gently away- Half stupefied and dazed, she went with him to the cemetery gate. Then she slipped her hand from his and bounded back like a hunted deer.

At the edge of the grave she plucked a daisy and kissed it, and let it fall gently on to the still uncovered coffin-lid.

Then she knelt down and joined her little hands and prayed :

' Pray God bless dear mamma, and watch over her this night and keep her safe from all harm.'

She had risen from her knees when Toroni joined her. She motioned him away with her hand, and kept her eyes still looking down into the grave.

' Mammy, in the cold, dark, long nights, when you lie here alone, and I am far away, God will take care of you, and Totty will pray for you as long as she lives. Good-night, mamma. Good-bye. God bless you !'

38 ZEPII.

The child blew a kiss to the mother she could see, where others saw only the big black lid.

Then she dashed the tears from her eyes, and, taking Toroni's hand, went out through the gates of the city of the dead, where all men rest, into the city of the living, where no rest is.

CHAPTEK VIII.

THE FATHBE OF INEZ.

It is the Santa Semana, or Holy Week, in Seville, and the town is crowded with foreigners, provincials, sight- seers, and mountebanks. From sunrise to sunset streams of people pour into the town from the two great points — the Madrid station on the Plaza de Armas and the Cadiz station up by the gate of San Fernando. The religious processions and the dramatic representa- tions of the divine tragedy are over ; the great bull-fight of Sunday is a thing of the past ; and to-day is Monday, the day of the world-famed fair.

Crowded as the streets are, it is easy to distinguish the natives from the foreigners. A Spaniard never hurries ; he puffs his cigarette and strolls leisurely along. Nothing moves him from his indolence. The foreigners, on the contrary, are hustling about and look hot and excited. Many of them have come to Seville just to see what is to be seen in a few days and get away. During the Santa Scmava there is so much to see that the pleasure-seeker who would ' do the round ' must be in a constant state of ' rush.'

Among the crowd in front of one of the best hotels, the Fonda de las Cuatro Naciones, stand a couple of

THE FATHER OF INEZ. 39

men. Their nationality is unmistakable. The tweed suit, the deer-stalker hat, and the red guide-book osten- tatiously carried under the arm, label one ' English- man ' as plainly as though the word was ticketed in large capitals on his back. And no one would attempt to doubt, after a glance at the high hat, the small polished boots, the ornamental shirt front, the black lace cravat, and conspicuously solitaired cuffs, that his com- panion is a Frenchman.

They are conversing in English, however, and from their manner are evidently old acquaintances.

The Englishman is the proprietor of a London music- hall, and is spending a portion of the year's profits in a six weeks' tour on the Continent. The Frenchman is his Parisian agent, through whom he makes engage- ments with what is technically known as ' foreign talent.' The agent has come to Seville in search of novelties for his various employers, and Mr. Jones, of the Koyal Eldorado, learning his intention when in Paris, has availed himself of the opportunity offered, and come on with him.

' Who are you acting for in this matter, then ?' asks Mr. Jones presently ; ' because, if the girl's what you say, she'd suit my show down to the nines. Can't I make the first offer ?'

' No, Mr. Jones, that would not be one fair thing. I am commissioned by Toroni, and I can act for no one else. If he gets the girl over he want to work her en- gagements all his own self. You'll understand that until her people give me a refusal direct you must not interfere. Is it not so ?'

' Quite so ; quite so. I should be sorry to ask you to

40 ZEPII.

do anything that wasn't fair, square, and above-board. But why didn't you tell me of the girl first '?'

' My dear sir, I never had seen — never had heard one word of her. Toroni he write to me where I shall find her. He no can leave England hisself. He pay me very well, and I come — voila.'

' All right. Well, when are we to see her '?'

' Now — this morning. Her people they live over the river in Triana, the — how you call that ? — the quarter of the gipsy ?'

' The gipsies' quarter, eh '? Poor folks those — not up to much ?'

The Frenchman laughs.

' Not yet. That is Toroni how he make his money He not take rich people, all fine dress and no do any- thing ; he take poor girls, poor boys, that are very clever, and want not much money. He buy them from the father or the mother. He say, "I give you one hundred pound down for your child. Yes — No ?" '

' But if the children are clever already, they earn money for their parents. Why should they sell them ■?'

' Ah, bah ! What use boy or girl be clever without agent, big bills, fine dress, and articles in the news- papers ? Come girl to London manager. Show what she can do. Manager say two pound a week, p'r'aps. Come agent, show big bills, talk very loud. Manager say fifty pound a week, and rub his hands with glad. You know that, Mr. Jones. Good agent make big success. No good without agent.'

Mr. Jones acknowledged that tliere was a good deal of truth in the agent's remark.

' Besides,' continued the Frenchman, ' this girl her

THE FATHER OF INEZ. 41

parents do spend, p'r'aps, all the money she earn. She only perform now about at country fairs. She will be at the fair to-day.'

' Then we shall see her ?'

' Yes ; but we see father first, over in the quarter of the gipsy. He sick — very ill. The hotel courier did go yesterday. Make an appointment. He come with us to-day. Talk the Spanish. Here he come.'

The interpreter attached to the hotel came up at this moment, and informed the agent that he was ready to accompany him, and the three set out together for the gipsies' quarter on the other side of the Guadalquivir.

The old Spaniard that the agent was in search of lived in a lodging-house near the Capella de los Marineros, and was evidently well known in the neighbourhood. The interpreter, who had been over on the previous day, had forgotten which the house was, and he asked an old woman at the corner of the street, mentioning the old man by his surname, Montanes.

She repeated the name once or twice, and then ex- claimed :

' Oh, it is the father of Inez you mean. Behold, yonder is the house of the father of Inez.'

Thus directed, the three men entered the house, and found their way to the room occupied by the old man.

The room was beautifully clean and orderly.

The father of Inez lay in a small bed in the corner, and by his side sat a priest.

As the strangers entered, the priest rose to go. The interpreter made an obeisance, and asked him how the old man did.

42 ZEPH.

' His race is nearly run,' was the answer. ' Speak of .your worldly things to him quickly, and I will return anon and fix his thoughts on heaven. He will have done with the world ere many days have gone.'

The agent and the music-hall proprietor sat down, and the interpreter approached the bedside of the old man. It did not need the words of the priest to show them all whither the father of Inez was bound. Approaching death was written on every feature.

Briefly the courier explained their business, and told him that the gentleman agent had come from a rich gentleman in England to make him an offer for his daughter's services, 5,000 reals, dincro fresco, money down, and a fixed sum a month, paid regularly through the great banker of Seville to him, besides a good salary to the girl, and food and lodging. The rich English gentleman would make the girl's fortune, and she would return to him a great lady, with gold and diamonds, and would send him over money too. For seven years he must make a contract with the rich English gentleman, and then his daughter might come back to him, and do as she liked.

The father of Inez said nothing till the interpreter had finished. Then he fixed his eyes on the Frenchman, and asked :

' The rich English gentleman has heard of my daughter, that she is so beautiful and so clever, all the way to the great country where he lives. How is that ?'

The interpreter explained the question.

' Oh, that is very simple,' answered the Frenchman. ' M. Toroni, my principal, has agents everywhere, who report to him when they discover talent. He takes that

THE FA THER OF INEZ. 43

talent, when it is poor and unknown, and makes it rich and famous. That is his business.'

The father of Inez lay still and thought for a little. Presently he raised himself painfully on his elbow.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I have thought over your offer. Inez is beautiful and clever, but now she earns not much, though since I have been ill she and Pedro have kept us both. I am dying, and she will soon have no one in the world but poor half-witted Pedro. Alone they are simple, and will be duped, and work hard and make no money. This rich English gentleman is clever, and will make them make money for him, and so learn to make it for themselves. He will keep them and feed them and clothe them. To-morrow come you back for the answer. Inez shall give it you herself.'

' But who is this Pedro ?' asked the Frenchman anxiously. ' My instructions say nothing about him.'

' Who is this Pedro ? Listen, it is a strange story. I am the father of Inez, and I am dying ; but when I am dead she will have another father. It is Pedro. That is not his name. What his name is no one knows. He is not a Spaniard. He is a foreigner. He talks very well our language now, but when we found him he spoke only a few words.'

' Found him ?'

' Yes ; it is wonderful how we found him — most strange. If the gentlemen wish, I will tell them. We had been, Inez and I, to the fair in a small Spanish town. Ah, it must be eight years ago quite now. Let me see, it was the year that my wife, my Mercedes, died ; that is eight years ago now. We came to try and get an engagement with the circus company, but the

44 ZJ'.PH.

roads were bad, and our mules fell lame, and when we came to the town the great circus company had left that morning. When we could not get with any travelling company we travelled alone, Inez and I, as the gipsies do, and played in the streets or in the small villages, and took the cuartos that were flung to us. I was a mountebank in those days, and Inez was a little child and walked on the stilts, and danced, and could ride and play tricks with the mules. That was before she got so clever, and Pedro taught her to fly through the air from bar to bar. Well, when we found the great circus company had gone we stayed the day in the town, and made what money we could and pushed on. We never stopped long where a great circus had been. The people laugh at your tricks ; they are not grand after the great professors and the fine dresses they have seen.

' It was late at night when we left, and we were to travel all night to get to a little fair about twenty miles distant, where we might make more money. As we made much money with our mules, who were trained, we did not care to tire them or hurt them, so we rode very slowly. We had left the town, and were going through a narrow lane, where all was still and quiet, when I heard a groan and saw something black move under a lot of broken wood and leaves in the ditch. Little Inez screamed and prayed to the Holy Virgin. I bade her take courage, and pushed the rubbish aside to see what it was, and there lay a man bleeding from a wound at the back of his head.

' We put him on the mule and carried him to the next town. On the road I bound up his head, and presently he began to groan again and to talk — strange words he

THE FATHER OF INEZ. 45

talked, in a tongue that we could not understand. At the first venta we came to I carried him indoors, and his wound was washed and dressed. He was covered with dust and dirt, and must have been lying in the ditch unnoticed for some time. We asked him his name, but he talked the strange language, and no one could under- stand what he said or what country he was.

' Talking wearies me, and I will hasten to the end. We stayed two days in the town, while the fair lasted, and the man, under the care of the Boticaria, got much better and could move about. We conjectured that he had slipped and fallen on the back of his head and cut it with one of the great jagged stones that lie about, and had become insensible. He had not been attacked by robbers, for he had money in his pocket, but no letters, or anything we could learn anything from. The Boticaria said he was not quite right in his head, and perhaps never would be again. There was a strange look in his eyes, and he talked much to himself. Well, just as we were going everyone said, " What shall we do with this man ? He does not know who he is, and he has only a little money. We must send him as a pauper to the cam de locos, the house of the mad." When I heard that I said, " Poor wretch !" for I know what the casa de locos means. It is a torture and a suffering that make the flesh tremble to hear talked of. It is worse than the Inquisition of which our fathers used to tell us such horrors. And while I was thinking thus the man caught sight of the golden balls that I throw in the air, and he laughed and sprang at them and flung them up, and presently I saw that he was clever and one of us, and I said to myself, " You are not too mad to be very

46 ZEPIT.

clever ; you shall come with Inez and myself, and the raxa dc loco* shall not have you."

' He came quite quiet with us, and by-and-by he talked a few words of Spanish and remembered little things, but he could not remember who he was or what had happened to him ; and when he tried to think much he would say, " Oh, my head ! oh, my head !" and put his hand across his forehead. Inez took to him from the first, and he began to pet her and put her on his knee and sing a strange foreign song to her as he tossed her up and down, and after that my little Inez would go nowhere without him ; and when I got ill and could not go about, he would go to the fairs with her, and play in the streets and earn the money and bring it home to me. And last year he remembered much more : he remembered that he had been once at a circus, and that his home was across the sea ; and that once he had a wife and daughter, but sometimes he says they died and sometimes that they fell off a horse and killed themselves ; and then he tries to remember, and his head gets queer.

' He is quite mad, but harmless and gentle as a child, and Inez loves him ; and now he has taught her to fly from bar to bar, and must go with her. She cannot go through the performance without him, and if you want her you must engage Pedro too. Inez will not go with- out him, I am quite sure. Come to-morrow and see for yourself. I am tired now, and can talk no more.'

The father of Inez, exhausted with his long story, fell back upon his pillows, and the three men rose and quitted the apartment.

' 1'rntr !' said the Frenchman. 'I don't know what Toroni will say about this I'edro fellow. Still, if he is

PEDRO. 47

necessary to the performance, and the girl won't go without him, I suppose he'll have to yield the point.'

' I vote we go to the fair at once and see the girl,' suggested Mr. Jones. 'If she's up to anything and Toroni falls through, mind, I have the next offer.'

CHAPTEE IX.

PEDRO.

The next morning early the same three travellers crossed the iron bridge over the Guadalquivir that leads from Seville into the suburb of Triana. The father of Inez was not alone when they reached the house. Pedro and the girl were also in the room.

The agent, who had seen the performance at the fair, had seen quite enough to dispense with any further in- structions from his employer in London. Inez was simply superb in her grace and dexterity, and would be a tremendous draw in London and the provinces, beyond a shadow of a doubt. She was a glorious brunette, with coal-black hair and eyes of liquid fire ; and her ex- quisitely moulded form was just budding into the early womanhood of the children of the South. Jones, of the Eldorado, was in raptures, and was trying his best to overcome the Frenchman's scruples and take the prize out of Toroni's hands. But Toroni was too good a customer and paid too liberally to be played tricks with, and the Frenchman stood firm against all bribes and entreaties.

As they entered the house Inez rose to greet them. She knew of their visit, and its purport she had talked over with her father.

48 ZEPH.

The interpreter addressed himself to the old man first, but the father of Inez pointed to the girl.

' Talk to her. The matter rests with her — not with me.'

' My father has told me all you would say,' said Inez, with a smile, ' and I have made up my mind.'

' And it is — to accept, of course '?' asked the French- man anxiously.

The girl glanced lovingly at her father and took his hand.

' No ; it is to refuse. While my father lives — and may the Holy Virgin spare him to us yet ! — my place is by his side. Is it not, Pedro ?'

Pedro's restless wandering eyes were fixed on her face in a moment when she called him by name. ' Yes,' he said, in English.

The Englishman turned and looked attentively at the speaker. He was a middle-aged man, with an English face, shaved close, after the manner of professionals, except on the upper lip. There was a strange, wild look in his eyes, and he seemed as though he were thinking of something far away.

' You're English, then,' said Mr. Jones — ' you that they call Pedro ?'

Pedro started, and looked anxiously at the speaker.

' Yes, I understand you. Who are you •? That's how I used to talk English ; yes. I remember now, I'm English.'

' What is your real name, then :> It isn't Pedro.

' Pedro ! Pedro ! No ; that's what Inez calls me. No ; I had another name once, before I hurt my head, only I can't remember what it was.'

PEDRO. 49

Inez let her father's hand drop, and came across to Pedro and sat beside him. She turned to the inter- preter, and said rapidly in Spanish :

' Tell the English gentleman not to ask Pedro questions ; it makes his head bad when he tries to think — doesn't it, Pedro ?'

Pedro answered her in Spanish.

' Oh yes, it makes my head bad ; but I'm English, I'm sure of that ; and I had a little Inez before you, that used to sit on my knee, and call me, not Pedro, but something else — before I hurt my head, you know.' Then Pedro mumbled to himself, and seemed to lose all interest in the conversation.

The Frenchman pressed Inez to reconsider her deter- mination.

' No, senor. While my father is alive I remain ; it is my duty. He has no one else in the wide world but me and Pedro, and we will stay with him to the end.'

' But your father is ill, and cannot '

The girl stopped the interpreter as he repeated the Frenchman's words.

' For shame, senor ! It is unseemly for us to discuss what I shall do when it pleases God to leave me an orphan in the presence of the one on whose death you speculate.'

The Frenchman bowed politely and shrugged his shoulders. He didn't understand such a sentiment in a girl who had been brought up in the streets, and who performed at country fairs.

' As you will, senorita. Then I must write my employer, M. Toroni, that you refuse point-blank ?'

Pedro looked up suddenly.

4

So ZEPH.

' Toroni ! Toroni !' he repeated to himself ; ' that was one of my names. I think I was Toroni. Yes, that is a name I know.'

No one listened to Pedro. They were all too intent on the answer of Inez.

' Yes, I refuse point-blank,' said the girl, laying her hand gently on the coverlet of the little bed where her father lay. ' I refuse at present. If anything happens ' — here her voice faltered slightly — ' to alter my deter- mination, I will let you know. Leave me your address, senor, or the address of this gentleman in England, and you or he shall hear from me if I change my mind.'

The Frenchman saw that it was useless to argue.

He drew a card from his case and handed it to Inez, who put it carefully in her bosom.

Then she rose, and gave them gracefully to understand that their visit was at an end.

The three men bowed, bade the old man and Pedro good-day, and went out ; and all the way home the Frenchman anathematized the father of Inez for being such an old idiot as to stand in his daughter's way by continuing to live.

' I should like to have made the bargain for Toroni, that I should!' he exclaimed savagely ; 'I believe that girl would draw half London.'

Pedro stood at the door and watched them right out of sight.

' Strange !' he muttered to himself. ' I understand that language quite well. What was I, and where have I heard that language always spoken before I hurt my head ? I remember a circus now and horses, and a little girl fairer than Inez ; but Inez is my little girl — I

PEDRO. 51

never had any other. It must have been a dream when I hurt my head. Toroni — he said Toroni. I wonder whether that was my name in the time I can't recollect ? I seem to know it.'

Inez came softly up behind him.

' Pedro, when we go away, far away, from here together, into cities that I have heard about beyond the great seas, shall you be glad or sorry ?'

Pedro looked at her for a moment.

' Away from here ! Great cities ! Ah, yes ! I remember — great cities and seas ; I have been over them.'

' You know this great island that they talk about, don't you, Pedro ? — this England ?'

' England ; yes, I know it. I am sure I do. That is the name of my country. I am sure of it.'

A gleam of earnestness came into his eyes for a moment, and then died out, and he smiled sadly.

' It's no use. I had just thought something about a little girl fairer than you, and quite little ; but I can't think who she was. Ah, Inez, when we go to England I shall try and find that little girl. I'm sure if I saw her I should remember who she was.'

Inez took his face between her hands and pulled it down to her lips.

' You silly old Pedro, I shall be jealous. What do you want with other little girls, when you have Inez your daughter to love you ?'

' Good Inez — my Inez,' murmured Pedro, ' I love you ! and I've loved you for years and years, haven't I ? but I'm sure I loved a little girl before you. No, her name

wasn't Inez. It was — it was Oh, my head ! my

4—2

52 ZEPII.

head ! That little girl keeps coming into it, and it

buzzes and buzzes, and makes me quite giddy.'

*****

A month later the agent in Paris received a note written in Spanish, which, being translated, read as follows :

' My father is dead. Write me the terms offered by the English gentleman, Toroni. I can accept none that do not include Pedro. Where I go he accompanies me. — Inez Montanes.'

Within a fortnight a contract was made and signed, sealed, and delivered, whereby Inez Montanes engaged herself for seven years to accept all the engagements offered her by Toroni, it being expressly stipulated that wherever she went she should be accompanied by Pedro, whose expenses should be considered in the salary.

'I'll let her work six months on the Continent,' said Toroni, as he put the document away among his papers, ' just to work up a little reputation, and then I'll have her over and put her to the double trapeze business with Zeta. They'll make a splendid couple, one so fair and the other a brunette — call them Night and Morning, or something of the sort. Zeta gets more clever every day, and if this girl is what they say she is, between them they'll be the biggest thing that's been known in the trapeze line since the world was created. I wonder where Zeta is. Adela, my dear !'

Adela, who was Mrs. Toroni, called back from a down- stairs room.

' Tell Zeta to come up. I want to speak to her,' said- Toroni.

PEDRO. 53

There was a light, quick step on the stairs, and a girl of about sixteen ran into the room with a laugh.

' Well, old fidget, what is it now ? Can't I read the paper for five minutes in peace after breakfast ?'

Toroni smiled, and laid one hand gently on the waving masses of the girl's auburn hair, while he patted her face playfully with the other.

It was a lovely, merry English face, open and innocent- looking as a child's, and it had a pair of blue eyes that looked you through in a saucy, roguish way, and defied anger and chased away a frown in a moment.

' Well, Zeta, I've some news for you.'

' I don't want any news of you,' was the answer. ' I like the news in the Telegraph a good deal better, and you've interrupted me just in the middle of a most interesting and mysterious murder ; and, if you please, how many times am I to tell you I won't be called Zeta, except on the posters ? My name's Totty, and I shan't answer to any other.'

' Well then, Totty, I've got a girl coming by-and-by from Spain to do the double business with you. We'll make a big sensation of it.'

' Yes, but you won't star her over me, or put her bigger on the posters, will you ?'

' Certainly not, Totty; certainly not.'

' When is she coming '?'

' After she has had an engagement or two on the Continent. I should say in about six months. I must think out some good original business for you.'

Totty had picked up the French agent's letter which had accompanied the contract, and was reading it.

54 ZEPH.

' I say,' she asked presently, ' who's this Pedro that's to go everywhere with her ?'

' Oh, I don't know. Some half-cracked fellow — a sort of adopted father.'

Totty sighed.

She always sighed when the word ' father ' was mentioned.

CHAPTEE X.

TORONl's NOTION.

We have lost sight of Totty since the day we left her outside the gates of the great cemetery, and we should find it difficult to recognise her in the graceful girl of sixteen who answered Toroni's summons on the morning he received from his Paris agent the signed agreement with Inez Montanes. Totty mourned her mother long and deeply. She was only a little child, but she was a friendless one, and she had no kind relatives and merry playmates to come about her and distract her attention from the abiding sorrow which had befallen her.

For many long months afterwards Totty hoped that Zeph would return from the far-off and, to her, unknown land where he had so mysteriously disappeared.

She never heard a knock at Toroni's door but she rushed downstairs with a beating heart, thinking it might be her father. Every morning she asked the agent if he had heard of her ' daddy,' and always the agent shook his head gravely and said ' No.'

The suspense interfered with her progress in that art to which she had now devoted herself, and Toroni de- termined that he would put an end to it. All his

TORONrS NOTION. 55

inquiries at home and abroad had failed to elicit any news of the missing acrobat's whereabouts, and he felt convinced that the poor fellow had died in some out-of- the-way place, and had been buried as unknown. Such things happened every day in England ; why not in a semi-barbarous country like Spain? He might have been killed in a street brawl, or murdered for the sake of what he had in his pocket. The manager of the circus to which Zeph had been attached had, from the first, expressed a belief that his favourite had met with foul play somewhere, and in this belief Toroni now concurred.

Calling Totty to him one morning, he told her, as gently and kindly as he could, that she must not grieve, but that her poor papa was dead. He told the child this as an absolute fact, in order that no harassing doubts might hereafter arise to distress and unnerve her.

Totty had long ago given up all hope of seeing her father again, but, nevertheless, the absolute certainty that he had died far away came as a shock to the sensi- tive mind of the orphan child, and she burst into tears.

'Oh, mammy, mammy!' she cried. 'He's dead — daddy's dead ! and I can't take him and show him where you are in the big churchyard !'

Suddenly she stopped, and looked up into Toroni's face.

' Master, if my daddy's dead, that was the reason he didn't write when mammy was so ill, wasn't it ?'

' Yes, my child.'

The little face brightened in a moment.

' Then he went first,' said the child, through her tears ; ' and he was there waiting for mammy ; and I

56 ZEPH.

shan't grieve any more, because I know she's happy now she's got daddy to sit by her bedside as he used to do here.' She dried her eyes with her frock, and added with a smile, ' I can take care of myself down here, you know; I'm glad they're together.'

Toroni turned away, and pretended to be very busy with the fireirons and the coal-scuttle. The child's innocence touched him.

But Totty was not to be put off like that.

' Master, tell me,' she said, ' will my mammy be a cripple in heaven, and have always to be in bed, or will she be able to walk about with daddy and the other angels, and enjoy herself ?'

It was a very obstinate lump of coal that Toroni had got hold of, and required a vigorous attack with the poker to reduce it to a sense of propriety.

' My dear, those things are not in my line,' he said presently ; ' and it's wicked to talk about them, except on Sunday. Here's sixpence for you. Now be a good little girl, and go upstairs and have half an hour on the bar. Show me your arm.'

Totty bared her arm.

' Capital — muscle developing splendidly. Now off you go. Stick to your practice, and we'll make a star of you yet, Totty.'

*T* "1* *^ ^J>

Eight years have passed since Toroni broke the news of her father's supposed death to Totty — eight years, during which the child, profiting by the instructions of her employer and guardian, has blossomed into a full-blown lady gymnast. She had served her appren- ticeship, and appeared as an infant phenomenon at the

TORONl'S NOTION. 57

music-halls, and had been leased by Toroni to various ' families ' in the earlier days when she was not suffi- ciently expert to be a ' sole attraction.' She had been la petite Nance of the Zingari troupe, and the great little Baby Wonder of the Frederici Family.

It had been her duty in the earlier days to figure principally as a little human shuttlecock, and to be tossed from one human battledore to another, or — to drop a confusing metaphor and speak in plain English - — she had been flung in mid-air from acrobat to acrobat. She had been hurled across half the halls in England, sometimes by the arms and sometimes by the legs. Now Pepita, the great strong woman, who hung from the roof by her toes or her eyelashes — I am not quite sure with- out referring to the posters which it was — would hold Totty with her teeth, then drop her and catch her with her little finger.

Then Messrs. Allfiery and Ongri, the modern Leotards, would require a clever child for their performances — a child who could be hurled through the air from the hands of one gymnast hanging head downwards, and who, having described a double somersault during the aerial journey, could catch the ankles of the opposite gymnast and swing gracefully to the strains of a popular waltz. For all this business Totty was trained.

Of late years a child-acrobat had been necessary to the success of all ' combination ' entertainments ; and Totty, being full of nerve and as graceful as she was plucky, was in great demand, and became a valuable property to Toroni. Once or twice Totty had a tumble, but without any bad results. The net was always in use., and the child, shaken and confused though she

58 ZEPH.

might be by a sudden and unexpected descent of sixty or a hundred feet, had always the presence of mind to scramble up and put on the stereotyped broad grin.

One maxim Toroni had instilled into her mind, and she profited by it : ' Always make the audience believe you like it, my dear,' he said; 'that's the golden rule of the profession. Smile ; the more you hurt yourself the more pleased you must pretend to be.'

Totty smiled under the most trying circumstances, and always inspired her audience with the notion that she was as fond of the air as a duck is of water. Infant Wonders smile while they risk their lives, upon much the same principle as a performing dog wags its tail when he jumps through a hoop.

But by-and-by Totty grew too long and too old to be a human shuttlecock, and, having acquired nerve and experience, Toroni thought it was time to develop her higher faculties, and finish her education as a star performer.

At the period we have reached Totty had just appeared in the acrobatic firmament among the vast constella- tions already shining there, and endeavouring, not unlike some other heavenly bodies, to put each other's lights out. The intelligent observer, blessed with a good tele- scope, may have observed that a few stars have it all their own way early in the evening, but that as the night wears on, other and brighter stars make their appearance, and the early shiners wax pale — perhaps with jealousy. So it is with the stars of the gymnastic celestial expanse. One star is very bright till a bigger star comes out. Now Toroni had his own notion about Totty. He had made up his mind that she should be

TORONPS NOTION. 59

the star of stars after a time, and he spared neither expense nor trouble to accomplish his ambition.

Just at this time he heard through a travelling show- man of the fame of Inez Montanes, and he shrewdly guessed that she would eventually be secured by some clever entrepreneur, and might probably be a powerful rival to Totty. He determined to nip the possible scheme in the bud, and take the wind out of the sails of his rivals in business. Why should he not secure Inez himself, and with two such strings to his bow command the market ?

The thought was no sooner conceived than Toroni acted upon it, with what success we have seen, and at the present moment he is maturing in his mind a new gymnastic sensation, in which Inez and Totty — or, to give her her professional name, Zeta — shall appear. He can think of nothing better for the moment than a double performance on the trapeze, and he wants a strik- ing notion for the advertisements and the picture-posters.

' I have it,' he says, after a few minutes' cogitation. ' I see how to work a draw straight off. Inez is dark as night, and Zeta is fair as morning. Good. I'll dress one in black and crimson and the other in blue and white, and call them " Night and Morning," or, better still, " The Evening Star and the Morning Star/' They'll look lovely on the bar, and they'll look lovely on the posters. I'll let Inez take a month in Spain, then the engagement at the Paris Hippodrome, then have her over here and rehearse the double business with Totty in time for the autumn season. Toroni, my son, if you don't coin money over the Inez-Zeta com- bination you never deserve such a chance again !'

60 ZEPH.

Mr. Toroni was so pleased with the notion that he went out and whistled all along the Waterloo Eoad ; and when he came to the big professional public where comic singers and serious gymnasts most do congregate, in the wild exuberance of his spirits he took note of the fact that there were only three professionals at the bar, and then paid for drinks round.

CHAPTEK XI.

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Inez Montanes accepted all the engagements on the Continent that Toroni procured for her, and was soon an established success. Her grace and daring, combined with her beauty, made her the talk of the towns in which she performed. Talent she had always possessed, but it might long have remained in obscurity but for the assistance which the agent's capital and business know- ledge gave it. Formerly she had gone through her dexterous feats in a shabby dress and with no elaborate machinery- Now she bounded into the arena brilliant in the colours which best became her dark beauty. Then Toroni provided her with a staff of assistants. A gentle- man in evening dress led her in and tried all the ropes, assistants swung in the net to try its strength, all the elaborate preparations were made by experts with grave solemnity. Inez could have done everything with Pedro's assistance, and without any of this display, but that would have been foreign to Toroni's notions. The spectators are tremendously impressed by elaborate preparations made in their presence, and by the sug-

A NIGHT OF TERROR. 61

gestion of danger which the tremendous care taken with every rope seems to imply. ' If you want people to make a fuss about you, my dear, make a fuss yourself.' That was what Toroni told Totty twenty times a month, — and from a professional point of view he was right.

Toroni had so much to attend to in London that he found it impossible to run over and see Inez, but from all quarters he received the most gratifying assurances of her success. Her last important engagement previous to her arrival in London was at the Paris Hippodrome, where she soon became the leading attraction. Glow- ing accounts of her beauty and daring were brought across the water by English visitors, and Toroni put forth his preliminary announcements.

It was soon understood that the famous Inez Montanes, ' now performing with brilliant success at the Paris Hip- podrome amid unparalleled enthusiasm,' would speedily delight the eyes of Londoners, she having accepted an engagement at a leading London place of entertainment.

Toroni was careful in his advertisements not to let it ooze out too soon that she would appear in conjunction with the famous Zeta. He kept that to the last, when his picture-posters should be ready and his programme completed.

The engagement at the Paris Hippodrome drew to a close, and Inez and her faithful Pedro came across the Channel and took up their abode in the lodgings secured for them by Toroni. Toroni sent someone to meet them at the station and conduct them to the rooms, intending to call upon them early on the following morning, his business engagements preventing him from doing so on the evening of their arrival.

62 ZEPH.

Pedro, who had gone through the Continental tour bravely, was strangely distressed coming across the Channel. He heard much English talked on board the boat, and that set him thinking. He sat and mumbled and talked to himself, and tried to recollect things. After they landed at Folkestone Inez was positively alarmed. His face was hot and flushed, and he talked so loudly and grew so excited that he attracted attention. She whispered to him to be calm, but he answered her that he was thinking, that he was trying to recollect where he had seen this sea, and this landing- place, and this railway-station before. He was quieter on the journey up to town, and slept a little ; but when they were in the cab, driving to the lodgings Toroni had taken for them, he kept thrusting his head out of window and gesticulating. He knew this place, he knew that ; he recognised a shop in a side street, and repeated the name over the door twenty or thirty times. Inez soon grew really alarmed. There was a wild look in his eyes which alarmed the girl, and he kept exclaiming, 'Oh, my head! Oh, my head!' At last, overcome with excitement, he threw himself back on the seat of the cab and sobbed like a child, crying out in Spanish that he was going mad, and that his head would burst.

Inez explained to Toroni's representative that her companion was subject to these strange fits, and that when excited a former injury to his head caused him intense pain. When the cab stopped at their destina- tion, and all the luggage was safe indoors, and her guide had left, she sat down by Pedro and endeavoured to distract his attention. She talked to him of Spain, of

A NIGHT OF TERROR. 63

their travels, of the old life at the country fairs, and finally of when she was a little child, and he used to call her his little daughter.

' Little daughter !'

He repeated the words and started up.

' Yes ; that is what I have been trying to think of, Inez. These streets that we have passed through, these people, and these scenes are all familiar to me. Why ? Because it was here that I once had a little daughter, a child — oh, I remember her now — fairer than you, with big blue eyes and waving hair.'

' Nonsense, dear Pedro ! It is some cruel dream that worries you when your head is bad. I am your daughter — your daughter Inez.'

' Yes, you are my daughter Inez ; but where is the other daughter that called me not Pedro, but some name I cannot remember — the fair one that sat on my knee here in a house like this, in a room like this ? Is it a dream ? Oh, great Heaven ! see, what is that ? It is a dog I knew long years ago.'

Pedro had rushed to the chimney-piece and held in his trembling hand a large china dog, which stood in the centre of the mantelshelf. Then he glanced rapidly round the room.

' I know the pictures on the wall. Inez, I am waking from a dream ! I have been asleep, and now I am opening my eyes after long years. Oh, I know all this so well — every corner of this room — everything about it. ' Oh, my head, my head !'

The landlady of the house, a kind, motherly creature, came up to see if the foreign lady would like a cup ot tea.

64 ZEPH.

' A cup of tea ?' repeated Inez, in her broken English. ' What is a cup of tea '?'

' Ah, I forget, mem, you furrin ladies always drinks coffee.'

Pedro had risen from his chair when the woman came into the room.

' A cup of tea,' he said, when Inez had spoken. ' Yes, I would like a cup of tea. I know what it is.'

' Why, you're English, sir ! Lor, I made sure you was a Spanish gent, like madermoselle here.'

' No, I am not a Spaniard. I am English — -I am sure of it. I know what a cup of tea is. Bring me one.'

' Yes, sir,' answered the woman, looking inquiringly at Inez.

Inez understood the look, and touched her forehead significantly.

' Hum !' muttered the landlady to herself. ' Mad. I hope he ain't dangerous.' Then she added aloud, ' You shall have a cup of tea directly, sir.'

She was about to leave the room when Pedro called after her :

' Stay, madam. This house belongs to you. Tell me, have I ever lived in it before ? Do you know me '?'

The landlady glanced at Inez for instructions, but receiving none, said boldly :

' No, sir ; I don't know you. You never was here to my knowledge before ; but I have only had the house seven years come Christmas.'

Pedro sat down again, and was lost in thought.

He hardly spoke again the entire evening, and Inez, who had suffered crossing the Channel, flung herself ■down on the little sofa and fell off to sleep.

A NIGHT OF TERROR. 65

She must have slept an hour or two, for when she woke it was quite dark, and the lamps were alight out in the street.

' Pedro,' she called softly, 'ring the bell for lights.'

No answer.

' He must have gone to his room,' she thought. She felt nervous, and went upstairs and knocked at the door of the room which was to be his.

No answer.

She turned the handle and looked in. It was quite dark.

* Pedro !'

Still no answer. The room was empty. She went downstairs and called over the banisters to the land- lady, asking her, in broken English, if the gentleman had gone out.

' Yes, madermoselle ; he went out two hours ago.'

Inez was alarmed directly. In his quietest moments Pedro was eccentric, and she or her father had always accompanied him when he went out. From the day they found him wounded by the roadside they had never allowed him to go far from the house alone. And now here he was, half mad with excitement, wandering about this strange city, of whose wickedness she had heard so much. The more poor Inez thought of Pedro's help- lessness and peculiarity, the more sensible she became of the danger he ran in wandering about these strange streets alone.

She sat trembling and watching from the window. Every dark form that turned the corner she thought was his ; but the hours went by and no Pedro came.

The clock struck several times while she] kept her lonely vigil, and at last she counted the strokes.

66 ZEPH.

Midnight !

Midnight in the mighty Babylon, the city of crimes ! And she sat alone and unprotected for the first time since her father's death, a stranger in a foreign land !

Midnight ! — and Pedro, mad with excitement, was wandering about, a prey to the robbers and wicked ones of this terrible place, perhaps waylaid and stripped of his money and cruelly treated ; perhaps murdered and flung into some dark cellar or yawning abyss to lie till the judgment-day.

Inez had heard terrible tales of London crime, and she shivered and burst into a cold perspiration as one by one they came back to her mind.

She grew so terrified that she was afraid to move. All was quiet in the house, and the light outside in the hall had been put out long since. Her bedroom was on the next floor, but she dared not go to it.

She was riveted to the spot. A fascination of terror was upon her, and the rustling of her dress, as she shifted her position at the window-sill, made her shudder and go first hot and then cold.

'Holy Virgin, protect us both to-night !' she cried, and cast her eyes up to the heavens, where in all their silent glory the sentinel stars watched unmoved the wicked- ness and misery of the Babel below. The first hours of a new day clanged across the night, and with a violent effort Inez tore herself from the window and flung herself upon the sofa, breathing out prayers to heaven for Pedro's safety, and vainly endeavouring to still the beat- ing of her heart.

Worn out with grief and terror she closed her eyes, and sleep came to her.

A NIGHT OF TERROR. 67

In the morning early she rose, put on her mantle and hat, and went out.

She had determined to go to Toroni at once, tell him about Pedro, and ask his assistance.

She went out in such a hurry that she forgot to ask the landlady what the number of the house was and what the name of the street, that she might know it again.

She turned back, and as she reached the house the little servant was cleaning the steps.

The servant next door was engaged in a like operation, and they were conversing.

Inez asked the girl the particulars she wanted, and received the required information. She wrote it down in case she should want to ask the way on her return.

' She's a rum un,' said the girl next door, pointing with her scrubbing-brush to the retreating figure of the Spaniard.

' What, our new lodger ? Yes, she and the genelman as come with her's hackerabats. We're always a-havin' hackerabats a-lodgin' 'ere. That there Toroni recker- mends 'em.'

' Does he know your missus, then ?'

' Not in any way pertickler ; only I've heerd as he was wery thick with a hackerabat as lived here wunst for many years. That was afore my missus come, and he's sent the perfeshun here ever sinst.'

' What hackerabat was that '? — Leortard or Blonding, or anythink like that ?'

' No ; they was poorer people nor that, and lived in the garrit at last, cos the wife couldn't do nothink, and he got out 0' work and lost hisself abroad. His name

68 ZEPH.

was Signer Zephio, and they called his wife Queen of the Aireyer, or somethink o' that sort, I've heerd.'

Toroni had sent Pedro and Inez to Zeph's old lodgings in Lambeth.

CHAPTEE XII.

pedro's dream.

When Inez Montanes fell asleep in the Lambeth lodg- ings, tired out with the long day's journey and the rough passage across the Channel, Pedro, too, closed his eyes for a time.

The excitements of the day had been so many and so great that his head throbbed and everything seemed whirling round. He closed his eyes to try and concen- trate his thoughts upon the subject which was struggling for supremacy in his disordered brain. The familiar scenes and objects had exercised a powerful influence over him, and his mind was in that condition when a powerful shock, either of grief, joy, or surprise, would probably have restored it instantly to its proper balance, and reason would have dispelled with its sudden rays of light the dark veil which had so long clouded his mental vision.

There are hundreds of instances on record where a sudden catastrophe has restored to its proper balance the brain which a sudden catastrophe had thrown wrong. Especially is this the case where loss of memory has been the prominent feature of the disease. A tree, a book, a face caught sight of for a moment, will often call to our minds instantly the long-forgotten scenes and

PEDRO'S DREAM. 69

circumstances of our childhood — scenes and circum- stances which have been effaced as it were from the tablets of our memory for half a lifetime, but revived by the magic influence of one familiar object, and now set there once again in all their primitive vividness.

If memories can be revived like this where they have faded naturally and in process of time, it is not difficult to understand that a sudden contact with once familiar objects will revive those memories which have been obliterated violently and by artificial means.

From the moment he set his foot on English soil the wandering mind of Pedro, the half-witted acrobat, had been undergoing the reviving process. The story of his life was written in his memory as it were in sympathetic ink ; that which would develop the lines gradually was the warmth of surrounding circumstances, and this warmth the hidden writing was everywhere encoun- tering.

When Inez lay down he seated himself in the arm- chair by her side, and tried to think of all that had distressed him so much during the day. He closed his eyes and gradually dropped off to sleep. In his sleep there came to him a strange mysterious dream.

He dreamt that he was riding a fiery horse round and round a great circus, and that a beautiful girl with a little child in her arms would keep throwing herself under the horse's feet. The horse jumped over them every time ; and then they brought him a paper hoop, and he jumped through that and never came down on the horse's back at all, but somehow he found that he had jumped right into a little room where the same beautiful girl lay ill and couldn't move, and she seemed to know

7o ZEPH.

him and kissed him ; and the little child had grown up, and kept running out and buying cabbages and tossing them in his lap.

And as fast as he caught the cabbages they turned into big brass balls, and he flung them up into the air and caught them again six at a time. And then, while he was just going to catch the little girl and throw her up too, she changed into a big acrobat, with a cruel face, and ran up his back and jumped on his shoulder; and suddenly one of the big balls fell from the air and hit him on the back of the head, and he fell down, and he saw the big acrobat with the cruel face bend over him and feel his heart to see if he was dead.

Then, just as he was trying to get up and run away, the little girl came again to him, and stooped over him, and he saw that she had blue eyes and long waving hair ; and she said to him, ' Daddy, this is Banbury Cross. Make haste and get up, or you won't see the lady go by on her horse !'

Then he jumped up, and the air was full of the music of bells, and the beautiful girl he had seen at the circus dashed past on a coal-black horse, and she had rings on her fingers and bells on her ankles ; and as she galloped by she seized the child and bore her off out of sight away into the gray mist.

Then he shrieked aloud for her to stop, and called after her, ' Come back ! come back !' and ran at full speed ; and just as he thought he had lost them for ever a Spaniard came along with some mules, and he held up a paper hoop, and a little girl bounded through it and fell into his arms.

Then, in his dream, be clasped the child tightly and kissed it, but when he looked at its face the blue eyes

PEDRO'S DREAM. yi

were black, and the light hair was dark, and the fair face was brown as a berry. But suddenly everything disappeared again, and he was in a little room. He could see everything in it distinctly. His wife was asleep on the sofa, and on his knee he had the fair child again, and he was giving her a ride and singing to her :

Ride a cock-horse

To Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady ride on a fine horse,

With rings on her fingers

And bells on her toes, And she shall have music wherever she goes.

Then the child crowed aloud with delight and clapped her little hands, and shouted, ' Totty like dat, daddy ; Totty like dat !'

Totty !

The sleeper sprang from his chair.

Totty !

The word was on his lips as he woke. He heard it. He heard himself say it. Totty ! Where was she ? A minute ago he had her on his knee. Where had she gone ? He rubbed his eyes and looked round the room. What a strange dream he had had ! Why, it seemed as if years had passed. It was all such a dreadful muddle in the dream, and so absurd. He really felt quite stupid. Wherever had Totty gone ! It was almost dark, but he could see his wife covered up with the shawl and asleep on the sofa, poor thing ! Ah ! she would never be able to get about again, since the accident ! Totty must have run downstairs. He would go after her. Perhaps she'd gone up to the top of the street to buy the supper. Of course that was where she had gone. He would go and look for her.

72 ZEPH.

He would not disturb his wife. He picked up his hat and stole quietly down the stairs, whispering as he went, ' Totty, Totty ! where are you ? Daddy wants you !'

But no Totty answered, and so he went out of the door and up the street to look for a fair-haired, blue-eyed little girl buying a cabbage at a costermonger's stall.

CHAPTEE XIII.

A PARTY OF THREE AT THE PIG AND BAGPIPES.

The landlord of the Pig and Bagpipes, Queer Street, Westminster, was not, as a rule, very inquisitive about his customers. He did not ask the ladies who fre- quented his establishment if they were married to the gentlemen who treated them to gin, neither did he inquire too particularly of the young gentlemen who tossed for pots of four-half if their mammas knew that they were from home. He didn't expect that the shabby down-at-heel ruffians who crowded the side bar, and talked back-slang, were members of Parliament who had stepped across from St. Stephen's to discuss politics, free from the trammels of parliamentary language and the tyranny of the Speaker's eye. On the contrary, he was pretty sure that most of his regular customers had more to do with the breaking than the making of the laws ; and he had not the slightest doubt that if they did take any interest at all in any legislative measure of the season it would probably be the Habitual Criminals Bill. Still, in Queer Street, Westminster, one must expect queer company, and the landlord of the Pig and Bagpipes was not in the least particular as to the

A PARTY OF THREE A T THE PIG A ND BA GPIPES. 73

morality or social status of his customers so long as they paid for their drink, respected his property, and settled their quarrels off his premises.

He knew that his house was the resort of bad characters, and that any crime committed on his premises would tell against him on licensing day ; and he kept a pretty sharp look-out to see that what he was pleased to term ' hanky-panky ' was not carried on under his nose.

He objected strongly to countrymen being hocussed and robbed in his tap-room, and he always gave a broad hint to ' confidence ' tricksters to complete their pro- gramme outside his swinging doors.

I have said that the landlord was not, as a rule, inquisitive about his customers; but on this especial evening when we make his acquaintance he has broken through the rule.

There is a party of three in his tap-room. The two highly respectable-looking gentlemen of bucolic appear- ance, and evidently well-to-do farmers, he knows to be two of the cleverest ' sharps ' in London ; but the third ' party ' he cannot make out at all. He has a half- foreign, half-professional appearance, and may be a confederate. But there is a strange look in the man's face, and he talks so rapidly and gesticulates so strangely that the landlord of the Pig and Bagpipes has a faint notion that he is, perhaps, a drunken foreigner whom these men wish to hocus and rob.

If his suspicion is correct, he'll stop it at once. He won't have that sort of thing on his premises. He's had it once, and he remembers what the magistrate said when he gave evidence at the trial.

74 ZEPH.

' Bless em !' he says to his wife — the word wasn't 'bless,' but another, spelt with the same number of letters — ' Bless 'em ! they won't pay no extry for their drinks. Why should I go and get myself into trouble for nothink ? Jes for them ! They gits the profit and I gits the loss if my license is marked.'

He doesn't like the look of that party of three in the tap-room at all, and so he listens to the conversation as much as he can.

It is so perfectly innocent that the men talk aloud, and he can hear all they say quite easily.

One of the bucolic gentlemen is speaking to the foreign-looking man.

' Have I seen her ? Why, ain't I told yer twice I seed her this very night, with my own eyes, a-standin', just as you say, at the stall a-buyin' a cabbage ?'

' Why can't you take me to her now — now, sir '? I lost her to-night — it seems years ago — my bright-eyed little Totty. I had her on my knee, and she disappeared. I fell asleep, and in my sleep I seemed to have wandered all over the world ; and I woke, and the child was gone. She was '

' You needn't go describin' of her agin — we know where she is — don't we, Bill ? We see the cove as took her away by mistake for his own little gal. We know his 'ouse. Why, his wife's fust cousin to Bill's arnt — ain't she, Bill?'

Bill acquiesces silently. Bill does not join in the conversation as a rule. He listens and agrees, and nods.

' Well, take me to her — I want to see her.' He springs up and dashes his hand on the table. ' I've

A PARTY OF THREE AT THE PIG AND BAGPIPES. 75

been looking for her every night for years — for centuries. I don't know what has happened to me — my brain seems on fire. Totty, Totty, Totty !'

The landlord runs in.

' Now then, gents, not so much row. What's up with the furrener? No larks here, ye know. What is it, mounseer ?'

Pedro does not answer.

' Oh, it's all right, guv'nor,' says the bucolic gentle- man. ' Our friend here, what we've known hever since infancy — hever since he cut his fust tooth, we may say — mayn't we, Bill ? — he's lost his little gal a-shoppin', and we've seen her, and we're agoin' to find her out 0' respect to the family as is connected with my friend Bill by marriage — ain't it, Bill ?'

Pedro lifts his head from his hands and speaks to the landlord.

' It is quite true. I have lost my little child. We are going to find her.'

' Well, drink up,' says the landlord, ' and go, else p'r'aps you'll miss her.'

Bill's friend and Bill take the hint as it is intended. The landlord goes out, and Bill engages Pedro's attention while his friend drops something into the glass of stiff brandy that stands on the table in front of him.

' Now, then, old fellow, drink up,' he says, ' and we'll take yer to the little gal.'

Pedro instinctively lifts the glass to his lips and drains it in a hurry. Then the confederates take each an arm and walk him quickly out into the street.

The landlord goes to the door and looks after them.

' 'Tain't no business 0' mine,' he mutters, ' what they

76 ZEPH.

do with the furrener now, but I wasn't going to have that game here agin. He's got a deuced good chain on, and some shiners in his pocket, I'll bet, or them two wouldn't have devoted their precious time to him.'

On the following morning a man was found at an early hour wandering about the streets, making strange noises and behaving in an eccentric manner. He could give no account of himself, and was taken to the police- station. He was dressed in an old ragged suit and a battered hat. It was at first supposed that he had been robbed and stripped in some den and turned out, but it was afterwards discovered from his answers to questions that he was quite insane, and had probably escaped from a lunatic asylum.

An old envelope, addressed to William Eager, was found in the pocket, and a penknife with ' W Eager ' scratched on the handle. When he was asked if his name was Eager he nodded his head and smiled. He was accordingly brought before the magistrate as William Eager, and this is the report that got into the newspapers :

' William Eager was charged with being a lunatic at large. P.C. Eobinson deposed that he found him shout- ing and gesticulating and crying in the streets at an early hour that morning, and that he had ascertained from a letter and articles in his possession that his name was William Eager. The police-surgeon stated that the prisoner was certainly insane, and not respon- sible for his actions. The magistrate thereupon made out an order for his commitment as a pauper lunatic, and the prisoner was remanded.'

INEZ WRITES A LETTER. 77

Inez Montanes read no English newspapers. If she had, she would not have connected William Eager with the missing Pedro. Toroni heard of Pedro's disappear- ance from Inez ; he also heard all of his history that Inez knew, and of his strange hallucination that he had a wife and a little child with blue eyes and fair hair.

Toroni heard Inez out to the end, and promised her all the assistance in his power.

And when the door was closed, and she had returned to the lonely Lambeth lodgings, he paced the room, a prey to violent agitation, and wondered what he should do.

He had discovered in a moment that the missing Pedro was the long-lost Zeph.

CHAPTEE XIV

INEZ WRITES A LETTER.

Toroni sat for an hour after Inez Montanes had left him, and wondered what he should do. There was not the slightest doubt that this half-witted acrobat who called himself Pedro, and had through an injury to his head forgotten his former life, was the father of his favourite pupil Totty. He was also the guardian of this Inez whom he had been so anxious to secure.

It seemed very strange that it should so have come about that the man they all thought dead should be so intimately connected with the great scheme he was now about to put into operation, and that the man he had long ago given up, and who had now so miraculously come to light, should have disappeared just at the

78 ZEPH.

moment when all the actors in the strange life-drama were about to meet.

On the morning following Pedro's disappearance, had nothing happened, he would have taken Totty over to the Lambeth lodgings, and the four so strangely con- nected would have stood face to face within four walls — aye, even in the old lodgings where Toroni had first seen Totty a child on her father's knee, and had set his heart on securing her for the profession.

He felt rather guilty in the matter now, and although not more sensitive or superstitious than the ordinary Italian nature is, he fancied he saw the finger of Provi- dence in the chain of circumstances which had brought him to secure Inez Montanes as a companion for Totty in her sensation flights on the aerial bar.

The more he thought of it the more it worried him. He was face to face with a new set of circumstances altogether, and he did not quite know what might be their ultimate effect upon his pet scheme. Totty was still under age, and Zeph was her father. Zeph had sworn he would rather see her in her grave than in the profession. What would he say when he found what she was doing ?

But then, again, Zeph was Pedro, and Pedro was the guardian and constant companion of Inez, and he loved her like a daughter, and by his contract Toroni was bound to keep Pedro and pay him so long as he retained the services of Inez.

It was enough to upset a stronger brain than Toroni' s, and it upset his very much.

Had he known where Pedro was — had he been able to see him and ascertain how far his memory had failed him

INEZ WRITES A LETTER. 79

— he might have formed some notion of what was to be expected, and could have shaped his course accordingly.

But Pedro had disappeared — had disappeared just at a moment when, if Inez's facts were worth anything, the memory of old times was strong upon him, and the slightest thing might recall the whole past to his mind.

He might turn up at any moment. He might come face to face with Totty in the street. He might brush past Toroni and recognise him at any moment.

It made the agent quite hot to think about it. What should he say ? How should he explain matters ?

Then there was Totty. Should he warn her that at any moment she might be face to face with her long-lost father — the father she had mourned for years as dead ?

No ; certainly not.

He made up his mind on that point directly.

He knew her excitable, nervous temperament, and he knew that the surprise would make her seriously ill. The dangerous feats which she performed so gracefully re- quired not only skill and daring, but a calm mind and an unshaken nerve. How could she depend upon eye or arm if every moment she was haunted by the thought that her father was near her, perhaps in the breathless crowd below watching her as she swung from bar to bar at a giddy height ? Every cry from the audience she would fancy was one of sudden recognition from him.

No. At all hazards the secret must be kept from Totty. He would go round and see Inez at once, and warn her never to mention a word of her past or present history to her fellow- artiste.

But then, again, Pedro might return at once. He might be back again at the Lambeth lodgings now. In

So ZEPH.

that case he would be bound to let Totty know — unless — unless

He hardly liked to say what he thought.

When he wanted Zeph out of the way once before he got him an engagement with a circus abroad, and acci- dent had done the rest. Now, if Pedro, or rather if Zeph, had come back again, it occurred to Toroni that he might be kept out of the way for a while.

If he could only have time to perfect the Zeta-Inez sensation, and bring that off without Zeph's interference, he wouldn't mind. Then he could bring Totty and him quietly together, and trust to luck and his own skill for the rest.

But how could he keep Zeph out of the way if Pedro had returned ? Pedro would accompany Inez and would see Totty. There was no means of avoiding it.

Toroni paced the room and talked to himself, and talked out loud, and stirred the fire and scratched his head ; but still he saw no way out of the difficulty.

At last he picked up his hat and thrust it on his head.

' At any rate, I'll go round to Inez and make sure that she keeps her mouth shut,' he said ; ' and if Pedro's come back I'll see what can be done.'

*!• *T* *T* *p

Pedro did not come back. The weeks slipped away, and there came no news of him. Every day Inez pressed Toroni to make fresh exertions to find her guardian, and he promised everything she asked. But it was the old tale over again. The anxiety preyed upon Inez, and she grew nervous and was awkward on the bar, and in her rehearsals with Totty once or twice nearly brought both of them to grief.

INEZ WRITES A LETTER. 81

It was very strange, but here, after the lapse of all these years, Toroni found himself in exactly the same position with Inez that he had been with Totty, and the same man was the cause of it — Zeph. He adopted his old tactics. To quiet Totty he had told her that Zeph was dead. To let her know the worst, and so settle her mind, as he thought, he concocted a long story, and told Inez that Pedro was dead.

The girl reeled back and turned pale, and then began to sob. But presently she dried her eyes, and looked very strangely at Toroni.

He didn't understand it.

' That's the Spanish way, I suppose,' he thought to himself. ' I've heard they soon get their grief over.'

But when the rehearsal was finished, and Inez was back at home, she sat down and thought of what Toroni had told her.

'It is not true,' she said to herself. ' It is a lie. I saw it in his face. Pedro is not dead, Senor Toroni, and I will find him. Why did you tell me not to say a word of him to Zeta '? There is some secret about it. You know where Pedro is, and you are keeping him out of the way ''

Inez took comfort from the thought. She saw that there was some mystery about Pedro which Toroni knew, and that he was anxious she should not speak to Totty about him.

Why?

' That I will soon know, Senor Toroni,' said the Spanish girl, as she wrote a letter. ' I'll tell Zeta all, and judge by the result what you know of Pedro.'

She sat down there and then and wrote a note to

6

8i ZEPH.

Totty, asking her to come round and see her early on the following morning, as she had something of great im- portance to communicate to her, and requested that she would on no account let Toroni know either of the letter or of her visit.

' How Spanish !' said Totty, as she read the letter that evening on her return from the hall where she was then performing. ' So mysterious ; and I dare say, after all, it's only some nonsense about this new double business. She wants me to wear pink instead of blue, because of her complexion, or something. " Say nothing to Toroni." All right. If it's anything wrong I can tell him after- wards.'

Totty put the letter carelessly in her pocket, and thought no more about it.

How little she dreamt what it meant, and what she was about to hear !

CHAPTER XV

TORONI IS TROUBLED.

Six weeks had passed away, and still no news had come to Toroni of the missing Pedro. Inez had told Totty all she knew, and Totty had gone deadly pale as the story advanced, and had swooned in Inez's arms when it was finished. Like Toroni, she had not the slightest doubt now that this Pedro was her father, the long-lost Signor Zephio. When Inez had described his appearance to her, and how he used to talk of the lady and the fine horse and the little girl — herself — and when she heard of his recognising the things in the room where they

TORONI IS TROUBLED. 83

then sat, and the street, it was impossible for her to doubt it. Child as she was when her father went abroad and her mother died, everything had made a deep im- pression on her, and she recollected all the details of those days of toil and struggle.

Inez was greatly distressed when she found that she had inflicted such misery upon her companion. She felt that Toroni was right in keeping his knowledge from her, and she quite understood his reasons.

It was so cruel for poor Totty to know that her father had been restored to her, as it were, had been within five minutes' walk of her, and yet at the moment when it seemed impossible they could be kept any longer apart they were once more divided, and perhaps this time for ever.

' It is so cruel,' she sobbed out, as Inez slipped her arm round her waist and tried to comfort her. ' It is cruel to you and to me ; just when we might all have been so happy. And poor daddy's gone now, and I shall never see him again.'

The old familiar term of childish endearment came naturally to her lips. Zeph had always been ' daddy ' to her. She was a child when she lost him.

Inez, borne down as she was by her own grief for the loss of Pedro, whom she dearly loved, tried her best to comfort Totty.

'We are sisters now, Totty,' she said. 'You will not be jealous that I call your father also mine ? Together we love him. Together let us pray for him, that he may

yet be restored to us.'

*****

Before the girls separated they agreed that Toroni

6—2

84 ZEPH.

should not know of their interview. They would cherish their sorrow in secret. They both, however, came to the conclusion that Pedro was not dead, but that Toroni had had him taken away that Totty might not see him and recognise him. Totty knew enough of the profession and legal matters to know that if Zeph was alive he could claim his daughter's services, and prevent Toroni profiting by her any longer, as he had trained her and brought her out without his consent. At least, this was her idea, and Inez shared it. They never suspected anything worse of Toroni than that Pedro was being kept by him in another part of London till all chance of his meeting Totty could be removed. Still, with it all there was the fear that after all he might be dead, and all Toroni said might be true.

With many mutual assurances of sisterly affection the girls parted after their strange interview, and from that moment they were as sisters, united by the holiest bonds of sympathy which could link two hearts together. Toroni noticed their friendship, but never suspected the cause. He was glad to see it, for the day of their debut in the famous double-trapeze scene was approach- ing rapidly, and now they were such fast friends there would be less chance of jealousy.

Only he noticed occasionally that the girls looked pale and out of sorts, and once he saw that they had both been crying.

' Inez is fretting after Pedro,' he said to himself ; ' but what the dickens is Totty blubbering about ? She can't be in love.'

The idea was too horrible to be entertained for a moment. Toroni dismissed it with a smile.

THE GREAT SENSATION. 85

CHAPTEK XVI.

THE GREAT SENSATION

The night of Toroni's new sensation had arrived. For weeks the walls of London had been adorned with huge posters of two gorgeously-attired maidens gambolling in mid-air.

Toroni was almost as famous for his posters as he was for his sensational novelties, and the pictures which he had designed to represent ' Night and Morning ' were well calculated to work up the excitement among sight- seers.

There, in the broad expanse of the heavens, dotted with innumerable stars, floated Inez, the imperial representative of Night, brilliant in a black silk corset and trunks and crimson hose. The lithographic artist had laid on the crimson and black con amove, and a very startling figure it was as seen from the tops of omnibuses. Inez typified Night, and her eyes were black and her complexion olive, and in her black floating hair the artist had inserted several golden stars and a crimson rose. Inez had half the poster to herself, and Zeta had the other half. The other half represented Morning. The sky of this half was beautifully rosy, to typify dawn, and rays of mustard-coloured sunshine were gilding a few distant spires. Beneath this lovely sky, close enough to touch it with her head, floated Zeta, in a beautiful pale blue and cream colour. Zeta was Morning, and the artist had given her a sweet smile and very red cheeks, and very blue eyes, and very golden hair, in order that she might form the strongest

86 ZEPH.

possible contrast to the lady on the other side of the poster.

Everyone who saw the poster talked about it. It was striking and effective, and the notion was sufficiently original to challenge attention.

Talking about the pictorial performance on the hoard- ings, the conversation naturally passed on to the real performance which was shortly to take place at the Eoyal , the great Metropolitan Palace of Varieties.

A week before the performance took place an army of sandwich-men paraded London with the following bill :

TORONI'S NEW SENSATION !

INEZ and ZETA.

NIGHT and MORNING.

THE FALL OF NIGHT

THE DAWN OF DAY.

INEZ and ZETA !

INEZ and ZETA!!

ROYAL PALACE OF VARIETIES.

MONDAY NEXT. TORONI'S NEW SENSATION.

Preliminary puff paragraphs appeared in the organs

of publicity ; the manager of the Eoyal made the

usual announcement ' To the Public,' in which the ex- pressions ' enormous expense ' and ' astounding perform- ance ' were printed in very large capitals ; and sen- sation-mongers prepared themselves for a treat, and determined to be present at the first performance, if they had to fight for standing-room.

The evening arrived.

Every detail had been perfected ; the new and elaborate machinery had been thoroughly tested. Zeta and Inez were full of confidence, and Toroni looked for- ward to the most brilliant coup of his successful career.

THE GREA T SENS A TION. 87

The whole programme had been carefully arranged and thought out, and it not only gave plenty of scope for daring feats, but, if properly and skilfully carried out, a really poetical idea would be elaborated before the audience. The limelight played an important part in the show, and the effects were so arranged as to be striking and dramatic. The principal sensational effect was the headlong fall of Night from the trapeze as Morning shot up in the air and took her place. Here there was what is known as a trick change on the stage from which the dives were made. The scenery at the back and the entire surroundings, which had been symbolical of moonlight and starlight during Inez's reign upon the bar, suddenly changed to the glow of mellow sunshine and all the glory of glad leaf and flower when Zeta shot up from the stage erected at the back of the hall, and alighted on the bar Inez had just swung down from. The machinery was so contrived that the girls met and passed each other like shooting stars in the centre of the hall, and in case of an accident a net was spread along underneath the line of flight.

After this scene the girls were again shot into the air by hidden springs ; but this time they met and caught the bar of a single trapeze which was lowered from the centre of the hall. Here, in the full blaze of the lime- light, they swung round and round on the single bar, now Inez uppermost and now Zeta. The limelight was so managed that when Night came up she appeared resplendent in the rays of the moon, and when Morning came up a silver light fell upon her. These changing lights came upon the girls as they revolved round and round the bar, and the striking contrasts of the dark and

88 ZEPH.

fair beauty and of their effectively devised costumes were certain, Toroni thought, to ' fetch ' a large public, and he had spared no expense in carrying out every detail to perfection.

The evening arrived, and the hall was crammed to suffocation. Well-known faces in the world of art and letters peeped from the private boxes, and the stalls were full of men more often seen at a theatrical first night than at an acrobatic premiere.

The conjuring and the entertainments went by in almost dumb show, and were hurried through. Nobody cared for such everyday affairs to-night. Everyone was on the tiptoe of expectation for Toroni's new sensa- tion.

To save time, all the ropes were fixed and tried, and everything was arranged before the doors were opened. Even the net was fixed, and had only to be lowered from above to its proper position.

The performance was timed for nine o'clock, and exactly as the hand of the clock in front of the gallery pointed to that hour, Toroni stepped on the stage and bowed to the audience. He received what is popularly termed an ovation, and bowed his gracious acknowledg- ment right and left.

Then he put on the professional look of caution and anxiety which the managers of acrobatic entertainments are always supposed to wear, and proceeded to tug at ropes and hang on to them, and give whispered direc- tions to the officials who were running about, lowering the net and the bars and the apparatus, and getting everything ready for the long-expected sensation.

At last everything was ready, the band played a few

THE GREA T SENS A TION. 89

bars of music, and then the heavy curtains were held aside, and Zeta and Inez bounded on the stage.

There was a roar of genuine admiration.

The men waved their hats and the ladies waved their pocket-handkerchiefs, and the roof rang again with the cheers and the applause.

Inez and Zeta, admirably set off by their costumes, afforded a splendid contrast, and Toroni himself, who now saw them together for the first time in the full blaze of the light, felt that he had indeed played a trump-card in this ' Night and Morning ' notion.

The applause was gradually hushed down, and then the girls took their appointed places on the traps, and the performance commenced.

As the whole change-scene was worked from the stage, it was necessary that the flights should be worked from the opposite end of the hall, and here a temporary stage had been erected, to which, amid the breathless atten- tion of the spectators, Toroni and the two girls pro- ceeded. This place was curtained in, so that nothing- was seen of the performers until they shot up into the air and flew towards the various bars hanging in the centre of the hall and on the stage.

The first part of the performance went off admirably. Inez, as Night, swung gracefully aloft among the stars and the clouds, and executed the dexterous and graceful feats which had won her her Continental fame.

Then a bell struck suddenly, and Night shot off to the other end of the hall out of sight, and lo ! Morning reigned in her stead, and, bathed in the bright lime- light, Zeta hung gracefully in mid-air, like a goddess of old fable resting on a sunbeam.

9o ZEPH.

The audience were delighted. They roared them- selves hoarse, and banged their umbrellas till the ribs broke and the ferules gave way. The sea of white, up- turned faces bore all one look — a look of intense wonder and admiration. Toroni was flushed with pleasure and excitement. The sensation had succeeded beyond all his hopes.

There is a pause in the entertainment, and on the little curtained platform stand Toroni and Inez and Zeta.

They have gone through the crossing and the meeting, and now they have come to the last sensation which concludes the performance.

They are standing side by side on a single trap, and they are being bound together by a strong leather belt, so placed that the audience do not detect it.

They are to be shot into the air together, and are to catch the highest trapeze, the one hanging from the roof of the great hall.

They are standing quite motionless and ready. Their arms are raised above their heads, and the hands curved ready to grasp the bar when they are hurled against it.

Toroni has his hand upon the spring of the trap.

' Are you ready?' he says.

The girls reply ' Yes.'

Then they draw a deep breath simultaneously. There is a click, a shout from the audience, and Zeta and Inez, shot like arrows from a bow, are cleaving the air, up to the giddy height of the roof and the iron girders.

A second and they will have seized the bar.

And in that second a sharp cry rings across the hall, and a voice shouts, ' Inez !'

THE GREAT SENSATION. 91

Inez hears it, and knows it.

'Pedro!' she shrieks; and in that one second the mischief is done.

There is a wild cry from the audience, and the men spring to their feet.

They hare missed the bar !

They are coming down headlong through the air !

The people rush from under the net.

Toroni has sprung forward, his face ghastly white.

It is all done in a second and over.

There is a crash into the net, a sharp shriek, and the bodies bound up again.

In the confusion and the rush of people to get away the net is forced on one side, and as the girls fall again it tilts, and they throw out their arms and try to seize the side.

A moment and they will be hurled to the ground, and maimed and crushed.

The women go sick with fear and turn away, and then a great roar goes round the crowd, and the women look again.

A strange-looking man, with wild eyes, has seized Inez and Zeta as they were falling, and holds them both against his breast.

The girls' faces are deadly white, and their eyes are closed in fear.

As they feel the clasp of the strong arms their eyes open.

' Pedro !' cries Inez. ' Father !' cries Zeta.

The man with the wild eyes had looked only to Inez. As Zeta speaks he turns swiftly and looks in her face.

92 ZEPH.

' Totty !' he shrieks. ' My child, my child ! Totty, look at me ! I am your father !'

' Who is this man ?' says the proprietor of the hall, who has rushed on to the scene.

' Who am I ?' cries Pedro. ' I will tell you who I am. I know now. / am Zeph, the acrobat, and these are my children.'

In the sudden recognition of his child his reason had come again.

CHAPTEK XVII.

BACK AT LAMBETH.

In the little parlour of the Lambeth lodgings, on the morning following the first performance of Toroni's great sensation, sat Pedro — now Pedro no longer, but Zeph.

He was very pale, and his eyes were red with tears.

On a low hassock at his feet sat Totty, his long-lost daughter, holding his hand in hers ; and Inez, her beautiful face full of love and anxiety, was whispering to him words of comfort in the soft syllables of her native tongue.

Poor Inez felt that though she had found Pedro again, she had lost a father. She knew his story now, and had no right to his affection. She had robbed Totty of a father's love all these years, now she must not interpose any longer. She was an interloper, and she felt it.

They had been up all the night in the little parlour, and it had been a strange party.

The girls, shaken only by their fall, and confused by

BACK AT LAMBETH. 93

the startling event which succeeded it, had been carried into the manager's private room, and Zeph and Toroni had followed them.

Both Totty and Inez, as soon as they recovered, begged Toroni to leave them with Zeph, and come round to Lambeth in the morning.

Zeph had not spoken to the agent one single word. His whole attention seemed concentrated on the two girls, and when Toroni, glad to postpone a troublesome explanation till he should be in a calmer frame of mind, sidled out of the door, and left Inez and Zeta to their newly-found protector, the acrobat never looked up, and took no notice of his muttered ' Good-night.'

How they got home they seemed all too dazed to recollect, but midnight found them all together in the little parlour where Pedro had recognised the china dog on the mantelpiece.

All night they sat and talked.

Zeph was fully restored to his proper senses ; of that neither of the girls entertained the slightest doubt. He remembered his past history and everything up to the time he had been found by the father of Inez in the Spanish lane.

This sudden recognition of his child had brought the whole past back as if by magic, and the last barrier to complete recovery had been swept away by the mighty torrent of reminiscences which suddenly flooded his hrain.

Little by little his whole life-history came to him, and when he remembered his last parting with his wife and child before that fatal journey abroad, he caught Totty to his arms, and laying his head upon her neck, wept aloud.

94 ZEPH.

Totty, glad as she was once more to see the father who was dear to her by every memory of her happy childhood, was distressed by the same thought which had caused Zeph to break down.

He had soon guessed the fate of his poor wife, and now, as they sat together, hand in hand, after long years of separation, the thoughts of the father were far away in the little grass-grown grave where the Queen of the Arena slept her last sleep, dust in the beautiful eyes that had watched night and day through many a weary month for the return of the wanderer.

' Oh, if she could be with us now !'

That was the thought which haunted Totty and Zeph alike, and as their tears fell thick and fast Inez crept out of the room, and in the silence of her own chamber flung herself upon the bed and sobbed. She had no right to share in the grief of father and daughter. It was sacred — a thing in which she had no part. The sensitive Spanish girl felt that she was in the way ; that she belonged to a period of Zeph's life which was ended now for ever. Totty noticed her absence and crept after her, kissed her, and brought her back again.

' We are sisters, dear Inez ; let us be both together with our father now. He needs us both.'

Little by little Zeph grew more calm, and then he explained to the girls how he had come to see them at the hall.

He told them how he had been found in the street, after being robbed of all his money and his watch and chain. He had been Inez's treasurer, and had about him all the salary for the last month at the Hippo- drome.

BACK AT LA MBETH. 9 5

He had been drugged, he felt sure, for when found in the street he was not in his own clothes, and his head was very strange and queer.

He had been sent to the lunatic asylum ; but in a day or two he got much better and calmer, and the keepers, seeing how sensible and quiet he was, allowed him to do as he liked.

The medical man saw him and said he was quite harmless, and Zeph explained to him how he had come to be sent there. 'I am quite sane,' he said, 'though a little queer in my head from a blow now and then. Can't I be let out ?'

The doctor shook his head and said he would see what could be done, and as he went out he whispered to one of the keepers.

' You want to be let out, do you ?' said the keeper presently.

' Oh yes,' said Zeph ; ' to find my little child.'

' Well, we none on us think you ought to be here, but the process of getting you out is rather a long one. It's much easier to get you in. It wants certificuts and examinashins and all that sort of thing ; and if the Government gent, was in a hurry or a temper, and you didn't please him, chances are he'd send you back and say you was as mad as a March 'are. No, I don't think you can get discharged yet awhile.'

Zeph's face fell.

' But how shall I do '? Must I stop here for ever ?' he said piteously.

' Well, you know, of course as long as you're here you're an expense to the country, and if you're sane you may as well keep yourself. Now, just listen to me.

96 ZEPH.

We don't want a lot of sane people here leading a lazy life and enjoying themselves, and having all the good things as is meant for the poor critters as ain't got their wits. So don't you go for to try and escape, 'cos we shouldn't take the trouble to make no inquiries after you much, and you might get away and lose the board and lodging free gratis for nothing as a generous country perwides you with.' The keeper winked his eye vio- lently, put his finger to the side of his nose, and left Zeph to his meditations.

On the following day, curiously enough, he was sent into the governor's private garden to do some rather dirty work, and was handed his own old clothes to put on, so as not to soil those provided for him.

He climbed over the wall in a second and ran as fast as he could till he got out of sight of the asylum, and asked how far it was to London of the first person he met.

Ten miles.

His heart leaped with joy; he had no money in his pockets to ride with, but he could walk it in three hours. He inquired his way every now and then, and got to London in the evening, and made his way to the Lambeth lodgings.

The door was open, and he walked in and went straight to his own room and washed and dressed himself.

The landlady was surprised to see him, but he told her he had been in the country.

Inez was out, and he asked where she was.

' Dear heart alive, don't you know ?' said the woman ; ' why, ain't to-night the first night of the great sensation

BA CK A T LA MBETH. 97

at the Eyle Pallis of Varieties, and ain't she Night

and that there Zeta Morning ?'

Zeph remembered then that it was about the date when her London engagement would commence. Some- how or other the events of the last few weeks had again altered the bent of his thoughts, and he had forgotten all about his dream and Totty, and remembered only Inez.

It was eight when he had finished dressing, and he at once went out and made his way to the hall where Zeta was to appear.

What happened we know, and Zeph finished his story, and Inez and Totty told him all that had occurred since his disappearance, and then they began to talk about the future.

Zeph's first outburst of grief at the loss of his wife over, he grew more cheerful, and as the morning advanced the tears ceased, and every now and then a ripple of laughter would run round the little room.

They were arranging their plans for the future.

They were all three to live together in a little cottage close to London, with roses round the porch, and a big back garden full of wallflowers and bluebells and currant-bushes.

That was Totty's idea.

Inez didn't know much about bluebells and currant- bushes, but she was quite sure that where Pedro was happy she should be happy too.

So they chatted on, building their castles in the air, till they talked themselves sleepy, and then Totty sug- gested, as they had been up all night, perhaps they'd better get a few hours' sleep, or they would not be fit for the performance in the evening.

7

98 ZEPH.

The performance !

That pulled them all up sharp directly, and Zeph

remembered that his daughters did not belong to him ;

that their lives were at the mercy of their master —

Toroni, the agent.

*****

The Zeta-Inez performance took place as usual that evening, and the news of the accident of the previous night attracted an enormous crowd. The knowledge that there was danger in ' The Great Sensation ' doubled its attractiveness. The British public, which is so humane and tender-hearted that it does not wish garrotters to be flogged, will rush in its thousands to a place of amusement on the chance of seeing women and children break their necks or dash their brains out.

Toroni had convinced Zeph that whatever his legal rights might be with regard to Totty, he would have great difficulty in getting the agent's claim to her services set aside ; and Inez and Zeta joining in the discussion, it was agreed that the engagements should all stand till the end of the season.

Only Toroni, anxious to make himself safe, agreed to pay Zeph handsomely, and to allow Totty to take up her residence with him. And from that time the girl's home was once more in the old Lambeth lodgings, where she had been tossed, a blue-eyed baby, on her father's knee.

CHAPTEK XVIII.

A WREATH OF IMMORTELLES.

Three years have passed away, and Inez and Zeta are still the stars of the profession.

A WREA TH OF IMMORTELLES. 99

Their fame is European, but it is whispered that they are about to retire.

It is well known that they have netted a large fortune, for since the death of Toroni, the agent, which happened about six months after their first appearance together, they have received handsome offers from all the largest places of entertainment in Europe, and have every- where been received with enthusiasm. Their affairs have lately been managed by Signor Zephio, who accom- panies them on their travels, and who is now their recognised agent.

Their last appearance takes place in London, and it is understood that they will retire at once into private life, and that the flying trapeze will know them no more.

Humour in this case is true. The girls, attached as they have become to the life of excitement and constant change, are yet willing to give it all up and live with Zeph in the pretty little house in the suburbs which he has bought out of the fortune they have accumulated. They have realized by their talents a sum which will keep them all, if properly invested, for the rest of their

days.

*****

It is the morrow of the final appearance of Zeta and Inez in the great sensation of ' Night and Morning,' and by a grave in one of the great cemeteries there stand a closely-shaven, professional-looking gentleman and two young ladies.

The gentleman stands bareheaded and reads the in- scription on a handsome marble slab which has just been put in its place :

7-2

ioo ZEPH.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

ELLEN,

THE BELOVED WIFE OF

ZEPHANIAH SMITH,

PROFESSIONALLY KNOWN AS

SIGNOR ZEPHIO.

It had been a whim of the acrobat that his professional name should appear. It was the one under which he had wooed and won his wife, and it was the name he bore during the happiest years of their wedded life.

Zeph and Totty stand reverently by the resting-place of the Queen of the Arena, who passed away in the days of their poverty. They would give all their wealth now to have her with them.

Zeph bends down and places a wreath upon the beauti- fully kept grave.

They go abroad on the morrow for a month to Spain.

It is the wish of Inez to revisit the scene of her child- hood and her father's grave, and Totty, too, is anxious to see the country in which ' Pedro ' spent so many years of his life.

The girls are sisters now, for is not Zeph a father to them both ?

As with a last lingering look they turn to leave, Inez stoops down and reverently digs up a tiny forget-me-not by the root.

'I will take this to Seville, dear father and sister,' she says, ' and plant it on a grass-grown mound that we shall find in a quiet burial-ground there. It will link our dead as we are linked, and the same sweet English flower will blossom then upon the grave of the father of Inez and the mother of Zeta.'

Totty takes her hand.

A WREATH OF IMMORTELLES. 101

' Zeta no more, dear Inez ; that life is ended. Hence- forth I am Totty, and Sign or Zephio disappears for ever from the scene.'

Signor Zephio sighs. The name is dear to him from the memory of old days, and it is like parting with an old friend to lay it aside ; but in the new life which they are about to lead they are determined that no trace of the old one shall cling.

As they walk down the gravel path to the cemetery gates they meet the man who is paid handsomely to keep the grave in order and tend the flowers.

He touches his hat, and Totty steps aside to speak to him.

' You will find a wreath of immortelles there,' she says, pointing towards the grave they have just left. ' See that it remains where I have laid it.'

With the remark she slips a sovereign into the man's hand. He thanks her and she is gone.

He goes to the grave at once to see the new wreath.

It is very large, and it has an inscription in black letters.

He reads it aloud to himself.

' Well, that's the rummiest thing I ever seed in a churchyard,' he says. ' I knew they was swells, because they paid so handsome, but I didn't know as it was a furrin queen they'd got buried in the cheapest part of the ground.'

This was the inscription on the wreath of immor- telles :

' To the Queen of the Arena, from Totty and Zeph.'

JO POWELL'S PILGRIMAGE.

CHAPTEE I.

ON THE EOAD.

The great highway was white with fallen snow. The powdered trees and hedges stood out against the blackness of the night, and the slight sounds of life in the scattered villages rang clear through the frosty air. Bumbling along the loneliest part of the road that lies between Bedfont and Hounslow came a waggon laden high with holly and mistletoe. Cracking his whip and whistling merrily,

' Oh, it's my delight. On a shiny night, In the wintry time of year,'

the waggoner sat on the shafts and accepted the jolting- over the ruts as a matter of course. And it was a matter of course to old Dave Finnighty. All winds and all weathers Dave had come along that road bound for Covent Garden Market once every week, and he knew every inch of it. So did the horses. They knew it so well that they knew where Dave pulled up for his last pint this side of Brentford, where he got off the shafts

ON THE ROAD. 103

and helped them uphill, and where they had to back a bit to have the skid put on. Dave used to declare that they knew whether they were drawing bunch-greens or savoys, but I don't go so far as that. I do believe, though, on this particular occasion they knew that they were laden with the red and white berries and the bright green sprigs for Christmas-time, for they trotted along, tossing their heads in the air, as much as to say, ' We're coming, you smoke-dried, pale-faced Londoners. We are bring- ing you the beautiful berries from the country to hang about your halls and your parlours. While you are asleep in your beds we are trotting merrily along the hard white road, and when you get up to-morrow the greengrocers' carts will be piled high with the " Christmas " that we've brought to the market.' Dave swears his horses always trot to the Christmas market. ' See 'em with a load 0' summer cabbages, and mark the difference,' he says. ' Bless you ! there's a lot 0' poetry in a horse's nature.' Perhaps the difference of the seasons has something to do with it, and Dave's horses can't afford to be poetically frisky in the dog-days.

Now, all the fifteen years that Dave has travelled this way behind a pair of cart-horses he has never known their poetical feelings developed to the extent of shying right across the road — till to-night.

' Dang the osses !' he exclaims, making a wild grab at Dobbin's tail to save himself from going headlong off

the shafts. ' What the dev ? Hullo, guv'nor, where

did you come from ?' Ahead of him, in the roadway, there stands the figure of a man, with his arm uplifted. It is this man's sudden apparition in their path that has startled the horses.

104 JO POWELLS PILGRIMAGE.

The spoken answer comes clear on the frosty air. Spoken ! — rather is it wailed !

' For the love of God stop and listen to me !'

Dave has slipped off the shafts and approached the stranger. ' What is it, mate '?' he asks kindly ; ' be ye ill, or murdered, or ' He stops suddenly. Stand- ing close to the man, he has seen something which causes him to spring back quickly into an attitude of defence.

The stranger who has stopped him on the highway at midnight wears the dress of a convicted felon.

' Don't shrink back from me ; I don't want to harm you ; I want your help. For four days and nights I have been crawling along behind hedges and over ploughed fields, hiding in thickets and ditches by day, tramping along under the cover of the night. I haven't tasted bite nor sup all that time. I'm perished with cold, and my feet are cut to the bone. Give me a lift, for God's sake ! help me now, and I'll pray God for you all the days o' my life.'

Dave scratches his honest head, and still holds the butt-end of his whip in readiness for action.

'You be a convict, guv'nor,' he answers presently, ' and you've escaped from gaol, I suppose. I'm an honest man as pays his way, and says his prayers for himself. Why should I go for to make myself as bad as you by helpin' you ? Perhaps you was innocent. Most of you coves are, 'cordin' to your own way o' tellin' the story. Get out o' the way and let me pass.'

Down on his trembling knees in the snow the convict sinks, and raises his clasped hands to the waggoner.

' Hear me ! I escaped from gaol four days ago. Up

ON THE ROAD. 105

in London there I believe my wife, that I would have given my heart's blood to save, lies dyin' I swore in my cell when she wrote as I might never see her again, that I would. If there was mercy in heaven I believed that God would hear my prayer. I shrieked my petition for help to the Throne of Grace from the lonely dungeon where I lay, and He heard me. I escaped. I got clear away, and I've got here — here where I can almost see the lights of London. I can't move another step nearer the great town without detection. Up in a miserable attic over there my wife lies dying, my name perhaps even now upon her lips. I have dared so much to get so near ; will you not help me home ? God will reward you. Think of your own wife at home, and if you should be within a few miles of her and then be struck down upon the road, to moan for help, and no help should come ! For your wife's sake, for the sake of a poor dying woman and a weak, heartbroken wretch, have pity on me now ; have pity — pit '

The convict could not finish the sentence. The exer- tion and the excitement following on the exhaustion caused by four days of travel and starvation had done their work, and he fell forward in the snow at the waggoner's feet.

' Dang it all, old chap !' exclaimed Dave, ' don't 'ee take on like that. Here, I'll help you, Lord love yer, whatever it costs. Here, take a sup o' this, it 'ull do you good.'

The kindly-hearted fellow raised the convict's head, and, kneeling beside him in the snow, poured the contents of his little brandy-bottle down his throat. The fiery liquor revived the man, and he opened his eyes.

106 JO POWELL'S PILGRIMAGE.

' You'll help me !' he gasped.

' Ay, ay, lad ; never fear. There's summut in your way o' talkin' as makes me believe you, and if you're a tellin' lies they're on your soul, and not mine. But I can't take you into London in them clothes, ye know. A convict atop of a load o' holly ain't seen in Covent Garden so often as not to be noticed, ye know. Here, I know ; shove this on — it'll hide them prison things, and keep ye warm.'

Quietly divesting himself of his big, long waggoner's coat, Dave put it gently over the convict's shivermg form, and then, giving him his old glazed wet-weather hat to put on his head, hoisted him up on to the shafts.

' Now, sit tight, guv'nor,' he whispered, ' and don't be afeard ; you're my mate. Hold on well, mind, 'cos these here horses knows they're nigh town, and they goes over the ruts anyhow as soon as they sees the lights o' London.'

*****

Rumbling along over the hard, white road went Dave Finnighty's load of holly, bound for the Christmas market. And Dave himself held the stranger firmly on the shafts, and never felt the loss of his overcoat. Only every now and then he looked at the man by his side, and once he muttered, ' Poor chap ! if I'm a com- poundin' a felerny, as they calls it, I can't help it. I know my old woman 'ud say I was right if she could see him and hear him carry on about his missis.'

The moment Dave had made up his mind that his deed would have the approval of his ' old woman,' he ceased to trouble himself any further on the score of criminality. His old woman was supreme arbiter in all

ON THE ROAD. 107

questions where he was concerned, and now that his conscience whispered that she would concur he was happy in his mind.

Nearer and nearer to London drew the holly cart. Hyde Park Corner was passed, and then they jolted over the stony streets in the early hours of the morning. About three the horses halted at their well-known spot in the Garden, and looked round for their nosebags ; but before Dave put them on he lifted his human burden gently from the shafts.

' Now, mate,' he whispered, setting the man on his trembling legs, ' cut along, and get to your journey's end while it's dark. Nobody won't notice nothing under that coat, and you can give it me next time we meet. Ha! ha!'

The stranger never spoke. He put out his hands and clasped the waggoner's brawny fist and shook it feebly. Then he turned and shuffled off painfully towards the Strand.

The waggoner suddenly plucked something from the cart and ran after him.

' Here, mate,' he whispered, ' take this here, and give it to your missis and something with it, and say it's with Dave Finnighty's best love and wishin' her better.'

The waggoner had given the convict a sprig of mistle- toe.

CHAPTEK II.

BESS.

It is the morning of the 24th of December, and the great city is getting ready for Christmas. East and west,

io8 JO POWELL'S PILGRIMAGE.

north and south, the note of preparation has been sounded. Do not for a minute let it be supposed I insinuate that there was an air of frivolity or joviality about the commercial centre of civilization. To represent Londoners preparing for a festival in a manner incon- sistent with business deportment would be to libel them. The busy bees of Babylon prefer on such occasions to improve the shining hour (I should not like to be com- pelled to indicate on the clock the ' shining ' hour of a London 24th of December), and tbey prepare for Father Christmas by dragging that miserable old gentleman into their service as a trade decoy-duck. And a very fine old decoy-duck he makes ! The worst of meat fetches two- pence a pound extra if you call it ' Christmas beef,' the leanest of turkeys and geese fetch fancy prices if you ticket them ' Christmas poultry,' and all the fancy trash that is unsaleable for eleven months in the year is fought for by enthusiastic purchasers if you label it ' Christmas presents.' So when I say that London was preparing for Christmas, I mean that the shops were very gay, the shopmen very busy, and the thoroughfares crowded with bargain-hunting humanity. Even the Borough was gay. I know it is very hard for anyone acquainted with that famous metropolitan district to realize such a state of things, but I assure you it was a fact. The butchers' shops and the grocers' shops were decorated with imita- tion holly leaves and small flags, and the drapers' win- dows were bright with Christmas presents in silver and gold, ' any of this lot sixpence,' and wax dolls and highly- coloured ornaments for the Christmas-tree, and the hundred-and-one useless knick-knacks which at any other season of the year a right-minded draper in the Borough

JJESS. 109

would reject with scorn. But at Christmas-time, even in the Borough, people will waste money, and so they must be provided with the excuse in the handiest and, to the vendor, the most profitable shape. Mr. Moggs, the leviathan of the neighbourhood, has this year distanced all competitors in his magnificent display. First of all, he has backed-in his window with a red baize curtain on which is artistically stitched in white tape the compli- ment of 'A Merry Christmas to you all,' and in order that you may have something to make merry with, Mr. Moggs's window is crammed with pin-cushions, thimble- cases, work boxes, paper - knives, ink-stands, blotting - books, purses, scent - bottles, date - indicators, watch - stands, and other small articles declared in bold black letters by Mr. Moggs himself to be ' useful and season- able presents.' Such a display has naturally attracted a crowd, and the women and children stand in six-deep rows admiring the useful articles a little and the red baize very much. If you stop to glance in and approach too closely, you must not be in a hurry, for the crowd grows in quick layers, and you are shut in and squeezed for- ward to the plate-glass window before you know where you are. Such a fate has just befallen a pretty, delicate- looking little woman, thinly clad, and blue with the cold. She stopped heedlessly to peep, and here she is being pushed to and fro by the swaying crowd. That the woman is terribly weak and ill anyone can see by her face, and she cries out as vigorous elbows are pressed into her sides. Now, a cry is to a London rough what a red rag is to a bull — it incites him to deeds of disorder at once. Did you ever see a man in a fit in the streets that it didn't take one policemen to hold him and four police-

no yo POWELLS PILGRIMAGE.

men to keep the crowd from trampling on him ? So it happened that when the poor little woman shrieked out that she was hurt, the London rough swooped on to the fringe of the crowd with a wild ' What's up ?' and drove with full force against the plate-glass window. Then Mr. Moggs and his assistant, fearing for the front and the seasonable articles, rushed out and charged the crowd backwards, and there began a free fight all round. And right in the middle of the clenched fists and trampling feet down went the poor little woman in a dead faint, and somehow or other the crowd broke away and she was left on the pavement mistress of the situation. And just at that moment there came slouching along, with slow and painfully lifted feet, a man with his hat over his eyes and a long waggoner's coat buttoned round him. "With his eyes furtively glancing from side to side, he went plodding along, and came right up to where the little woman lay.

'Look out, governor!' called a woman standing by. ' Can't you see the woman's ill ?'

The man looked down, and then, with a strange cry, half of joy and half of pain, fell on his knees by the fainting woman and lifted her head tenderly from the ground.

' Bess ! Bess !' he shrieked. ' Great God, why doesn't she speak? Bess, are you hurt? Speak, for God's sake!'

The woman opened her eyes. For a moment she seemed nearly dazed, and then consciousness came to her in one swift spasm. Imbued with a sudden strength, she scrambled to her feet, and, flinging her arms about the man's neck, sobbed out, ' Jo — my Jo ! Thank God !'

The inhabitants and visitors to the Borough had been

A STEP ON THE STAIJiS. 1 1 1

treated to a little domestic melodrama which they did not have the opportunity of witnessing often. Jo Powell the convict and his wife had met.

CHAPTEE III.

A STEP ON THE STAIES.

Later on in the day Jo Powell sat beside his wife in the miserable garret where she managed to keep body and soul together by making shirts for a slop-house in the City. Escaping down a side- street from the astonished bystanders, Jo, who had no wish to be too attentively scrutinized, had arrived with his wife at her ' residence ' by devious paths. There was ever present in his mind the fact that in a moment he might be pounced upon. Under the kindly waggoner's coat was the convict's dress, and under his slouched hat was his prison-cropped hair. The slightest accident might betray him, and so, hardly speaking to his wife on the road, he bade her hurry on in front and take the byways where she could.

At last they were together and alone, and then the convict, clasping the trembling little woman to his breast, kissed her and cried over her till she gently bade him be a man, and then she broke down herself, and they sat side by side like two children, red-eyed and sobbing.

And then Jo had to tell Bess the whole truth. How he had received her letter saying she was ill, and how he had got it into his head that he might never see her again, and then how he'd thought and thought until the idea had grown upon him that he must see her ; how he

1J2 JO POWELLS PILGRIMAGE.

had lain awake night after night in his cell, fancying perhaps she was dying, and calling him and praying to see him once more, and how at last he determined to get out if he could, and how his plan had succeeded, and there he was. ' And we'll spend Christmas Day together, Bess, my darling,' he added, laying her head on his bosom and smoothing the bright brown hair with his hand. ' We'll spend it together, my lass, if it's the last day we spend together on earth.'

Hush ! there is a step on the stairs. It is coming up towards the garret.

Instinctively the convict leaps to his feet and grasps the chair.

' What is it '?' he whispers. ' Hark ! it is coming here. Bolt the door.'

Quick as lightning, Bess has flown to the door and slipped the rickety bolt.

Then they hold their breath and listen, their bosoms heaving, every nerve upon the strain. The step comes right up to the door. It is the heavy tramp of a man. He tries the door, and then knocks with his knuckles.

' What do you want ?' gasps the terrified woman, the cold perspiration standing out in beads upon the marble forehead.

' To speak to you.'

'Ha! ha! ha!' she laughs hysterically, and catches at her breath. ' It's Ja — it's Jack.' She speaks with difficulty, her hand at her side, and she gasps at every word. The excitement has prostrated her. ' It's Jack Barnes,' she falters. Then she sinks into the chair, still with her hand on her heart.

' Jack Barnes '?' cries the convict. ' What, our old

A STEP ON THE STAIRS. 113

friend ?' He hesitates a moment, then advances to the door and pulls the bolt back. Seeing what he was about to do, Bess sprang forward, but it was too late. Jack Barnes is in the room and has recognised his friend.

Jack Barnes is a big burly fellow, and a master carpenter, and he has his apron on and his white cap, for his shop is at the back of this very house.

But, burly as he is, he shakes and trembles at the sight of Jo, and against his white apron and cap the sudden crimson of his cheeks comes out in bold relief.

Jo Powell puts his old friend's agitation down to the surprise of such a meeting, and steps forward to take his hand.

' Jack, old friend,' he says nervously, ' my life's in your hands. Of course you're my friend, I know, but I only tell you so as you may be cautious. I've escaped — come home to see the old woman once again — to spend Christmas with her.' He smiles a ghastly smile. ' It's a queer notion, ain't it, for a convict wanting to spend Christmas with his wife ; but it come to me so strong I couldn't choke it off, and here I am, and you won't betray me, will you ?'

Jack Barnes has not recovered his composure yet, and he hesitates. Bess comes quickly forward and takes his hand.

' You'll keep our secret, won't you, Jack, for my sake '?'

There is a world of pleading in her voice, and a look in her eyes that would have told a story to some men at