grind a little hand organ. It came about that, during some alterations in the place, a temporary wooden sidewalk was erected scarcely six feet wide, for the accommodation of the public. Our fat friend saw his opportunity. He took up his station in the narrow way, occupying half the gangway. You could barely pass him without treading on his feet. People tumbled over him and kicked him by mistake, and for very shame had to solace him, his blind face looked so innocent. A friend of mine, indignant at such blatant obstruction, complained to a constable, and the answer was, "Oh, we never interfere with him, he has been there for years." friend pointed out that "there" was a different place altogether. At last the bold blind beggar became such a public nuisance, thrusting his feet forward to be trodden on, that others complained, and the police had to relegate him to his old and less assertive position by the shop.

My

Everyone is familiar with the man who has lost his money, and wants a third-class ticket with which to get home; the tale is thrice told, and deceives none save those who give the sum asked for under a fond hope that they may have come across a genuine case; but for cool impudence commend me to the jocular familiarity of the "well-dressed stranger" who used to haunt the highways of South Kensington. He was a smart, military-looking man, arrayed point-device, with a frank, truthful gaze which looked you between the eyes, the embodiment of gentility without any shabbiness. His linen was clean, he carried an expensive walking-stick, and he used to spend much of his spare time in public libraries reading reviews. How he utilized this cheaply acquired knowledge I cannot tell, unless he compiled statistics or novels, but his methods for his immediate requirements were

these. He heaved alongside of me one day twirling his moustache like an art critic before an undiscovered masterpiece. "Excuse me, sir, but I've been a fool." It was so confidential and bland. I looked at him in astonishment, and said: "Don't say that. You don't look like a fool." He positively bridled. "You flatter me, sir, but I really have made a fool of myself." "How is that?" I asked. "Well, the fact is I've been horse-racing like a silly ass, put my money on a succession of wrong 'uns, couldn't stop in time, and here I am. This is literally my last shirt." The garment in question was spotless, a great deal cleaner than my own in fact. "If you could just lend me half a sov., I should be awfully obliged. Of course I'll give you my name and address, and you shall have it back in a fortnight." He might have been asking for a light, and explaining how he left his matchbox behind. He was rather conferring a favor on me by pointing out the obvious thing to do. I know it is quite incredible, but I refused to lend him the ten shilings. "Of course," he retorted with a pitying air, "I am a total stranger to you, but I thought perhaps you might feel inclined to do me a favor. Good-day, sir.” There was no anger, no whine, no sneers at my close fist, and his pity made me feel that I had lost an opportunity. went home feeling very mean. But I had not seen the last of my friend. Some months later he accosted me in Piccadilly on a foggy day. "Excuse me, sir, "Oh, yes," I replied. "I know. You are the man who has been a fool." He burst forth into purple language, and disappeared.

I

Such engaging candor was irresistible, and probably succeeded nearly every time, and if ten shillings rewarded each friendly chat, he may now be living in affluent respectability and is probably a churchwarden.

Talent should always be rewarded, but for some forms of begging no talent is required. For instance, when unemployment is rife, five or six stout fellows in their best corduroys will hire an organ, and stand in a row by the pavement while one grinds, and another shakes a money box in the face of the public. I had it once on the authority of an indignant 'busdriver, who knew one of them, that each took more in a day than he earned in a week, and I shrink from stating the sum for fear of being disbelieved.

There is an old Frenchman who is constantly seen in South Kensington, and whose methods are extremely simple, but his appearance is a masterpiece. A frogged coat with a short cape gives him a military air, a tall hat with true Parisian flat brim carries a whiff of the Faubourg St. Germain, and a dandy cane poised in a delicate hand, which looks as though it had featly wielded a rapier in better days, overwhelms you with an impression of gentility. He is tall, and smiles sadly down on you, from St. Cloud as it were, as he asks you the nearest way to Croydon.

If you

Basingstoke would do equally well, but he prefers Croydon. You tell him in your worst French, and then he relates with the air of a "Banished Lord" how he has had his pocket picked. cannot give him money, he requests with resignation that he may be permitted to give you and yours lessons in French! The idea of this noble old aristocrat doing any thing so plebeian seems a trifle incongruous, but you are obliged to continue the conversation because there is something pleasing in being seen talking to such a distinguished-looking person, and it is only on his acceptance, with a pitying air, of some lame excuse that you will be permitted to go on your way.

One evening at dinner-time my door

bell was rung violently, and I was told a man urgently wanted to see me. A vivacious little man, respectably dressed, and with eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, greeted me with fervor on the doorstep. He had come to thank me, that was all. On my asking him what benefit I had done him, he rapidly poured forth his story. Some years ago he had been knocked down by a butcher's cart just opposite Gloucester Road Station, and I, fortunately passing at the moment, had picked him up, hailed a passing cab, and driven him off to the Hospital. He was now cured, though I could see by his demonstration one leg was shorter than the other, still he was able to work, and he could not leave London without laying his gratitude at my feet. This tickled my heartstrings with a pleasing warmth, for it was the kind of thing which, of course, I should have done, but, unfortunately, having no recollection of the affair, or of his face, I denied the soft impeachment. Then came further details too numerous to be mentioned here, little shadings, middle distances, all put in with the sincerity of an artist, till the more he added, the more I liked the picture. It was so true to nature, and so circumstantial, that I was almost persuaded that I really had been a good Samaritan. His thanks were received with the vicarious grace which should have belonged to another, and I was about to dismiss him with my benediction when the true cause of his quest came out. He had just obtained a situation in Bristol worth 258. a week, and he congratulated himself on his good fortune in such hard times, and after his accident too! I mingled my gratulations with his in a friendly tone when he just let fall, by the way as it were, that his resources were at a low ebb, and he modestly craved the loan of a third-class fare to the said western port. His gratitude was a

street beggar. He feels his story for the moment, and his tears flow with the same sympathy as the actor's. He is as fascinating and as traditionally old as Punch and Judy, only he is nearer to life itself. When he accosts you in the street you feel that, but for the grace of God and an unaccountable thing called fortune, you might be making out a similar case. If we pay, we are rewarding an artist, if we deny him, let us at least appreciate his talent.

Gilbert Coleridge.

CHAPTER I.

Arnold walked all that night and the following day without anything like a rest. He saw things without heeding them. The fading of the stars, the creep of the dawn, and then the sun starting up to the left of him were matters of course. So were the market-carts plodding on to Covent Garden, leaving trails of tobacco-smoke behind them. He got past these quite easily. Only the motor-cars gave him a glimmering consciousness of himself-their brutal bright eyes and offensive sudden bark when almost on the top of him; he rapped out a curse at one of them as it flashed past at about "thirty," just scraping his toes. This was in a lane a little wider than the car itself. The lane smelt of honeysuckle, and he was aware of that. A ripple of laughter drifted back to him from the car, and then he was more lost than before-indignant still, but totally lost.

And yet he brooded all the while. He mixed up Gertie with Mr. John and Mr. Ralph-these three were the enemies who had sped him forth like thistledown before a gale. There was a fourth-Hilton Caswell, a fellow with very black eyes, moustache, and

beard, and a complexion like a smoked cider-apple's. But after the birds began to chirrup he didn't make much show in Arnold's wilderness of a mind. That was odd, considering how intimately he had to do with Gertie and the present flight from Surbiton. Arnold stopped once by a milestone, and with his hand on it tried to hold on to Caswell's personality. He had always hated Caswell's red-faced smile, especially when Gertie was near it; but whywhy-why-and who was the brute? It beat him, and, shaking his head at the milestone, he wandered on.

Mr. John and Mr. Ralph lasted much longer in him. They bullied him about contangoes and Heaven knows what. He could hear their voices. "Now then, look spry with those accounts. What! Tired, d'you say? Rubbish! You don't know your luck, making an extra dollar every night this week! Not many firms treat their clerks like that in boom-times. Don't grouse about nothing, and hurry up!" was Mr. Ralph. A good-hearted sort, Mr. Ralph. Mr. John's method was a bit keener. "Good God, not done with your lot yet! When will you be? Look here, you'll have to march to the scrap-heap if you don't hustle." This

That

was in the office, of course, with all the lights on. What a relief to slip away for the last train of the livelong day! Then Gertie got complete control of him. There he sat, collapsed in an empty "third," facing the blankness of a future without her. All this sweating and tearing after-hours' work just for himself? Not much. Impossible. Why, she had been the sustaining keystone of his efforts for years. He had said just that to one of the men in the office-what was his name?"If I wasn't engaged I'd chuck it and buy a revolver. A fellow's head can't keep it up without the best kind of hope. That's what she is to me the very best. We're to be married when I've saved two-fifty, and I'm in the two-twenties already." "Poor old Johnnie! you'll soon be in your chains as well, then," the man had retorted rather nastily. Every one had raw edges in boom-times. himself felt like taking the man by the ears (he had conveniently large ears) and putting his nose in the ink-pot. What was his name? He could see him as plainly as Gertie herself; but as for his name, that couldn't be caught. Well, it didn't matter. The main thing was to plod on. That was the imperative necessity-to keep moving.

He

With the warming up of the new day Arnold couldn't think of anything or anyone except Gertie. She dodged in and out of him. One time she was a lovely memory, so that he stood and cherished it. But there were other memories which made him shiver and increase the length of his strides. The worst had to do with a letter. It began: "Dear old boy, you will be distressed to receive this, but I must write it, dear." It was an awful letter. He couldn't recall any more of it, but it meant that he had lost her. It came to him again and again, always with an accompanying shiver or

shudder. Once he was going through a village when it came upon him. Some one put a hand on his shoulder and asked if anything was wrong with him. How he flung the hand off him! "Mind your own business!" he cried, and away he went. All he remembered of that village was its inn, with two old-fashioned supporting posts under the window of its porch. But he couldn't have given the inn its name to save his life, although its sign stuck out from that peculiar window. Very patchy this memory, of his, even so early in the fateful day!

He didn't want to eat or drink, but merely to move. He didn't exactly want to move either, but there was always that gadfly of unrest urging him forward. As for the roads, he took them anyhow. His gadfly was supremely indifferent. It turned him out of broad white mainways into the narrowest of lanes, and an hour later would land him back into the thoroughfare, with motor-cars and dust all about.

So it went on until the evening, when something-not the gadfly this time-made him get over a rather mouldy gate and zigzag through a clover-scented field towards a stream. The stream took him by surprise. He stood on its bank, stared at some irises in the shallows, and then sat down. It was mowing grass, but it would have been just the same to him had it been ripe wheat. Down he sat, gazed at the gliding water for a few minutes, and then lay full-length and seemed to sleep.

That was what he required-sleep. The doctor they fetched to him at the white farm-house above the meadow said so. If he had slept at the proper time, and sufficiently, that is to say.

He was roused by a little image with fat, bare legs, two large, round blue eyes, and the words, "What you doin' here?"

He couldn't answer the question, sat up and looked the child over, and then looked at the stream.

"This b'longs to gran'father, all this part," said the little boy, with a chubby hand towards the sun. The sun was setting amid crimson splashes behind some distant trees.

"Oh, does it?"

Arnold got up, but had to sit down again. "I'm done," he said. A mist came to his eyes. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at the river.

"It's water," said the child, with baby conceit. "Tommy Cat-cart got drowned over there. He fell in."

"Tommy Catgut!" Arnold exclaimed, and broke into rusty laughter, “What a name-Tommy Catgut!"

Suddenly the child ran away, and after a time returned with a blue-eyed young woman who was unmistakably his parent. He proclaimed the fact nevertheless. "Here's mother!" he said. She was very pretty, and gentle with Arnold; these were the impressions she made upon him. But the questions she asked! And the absurdity of his not being able to answer them to her satisfaction!

"No," he replied rather crossly at length; "I don't know where I am, nor my name, nor anything. And I don't want to. Let me go to sleep, will you?"

Instead of doing this, she sent Willie to the farm for grandfather. It struck Arnold as droll that the boy should have a name and he none, so far as he knew. He said so with a chuckle that made the pretty young woman gasp and then gaze after her boy.

"I'm afraid you are very poorly," she said very softly.

He didn't argue the point, only nodded.

"You've been walking all day and all night?"

"Ever so many days and ever so many nights," he told her.

"Then you must be ill," she said. And that is what the doctor said he ought to be, if he wasn't.

Willie's grandfather (an amiable giant in brown gaiters) armed him up to the house as irresistibly as a traction-engine, and there he sat shrugging and yawning and able to say nothing convincing until the doctor arrived.

"I'll send him a draught," said the doctor, after more questions and some mauling. "And I should think there'll be no risk in accommodating him for the night, Mr. Harcourt. He seems a gentlemanly young fellow."

Outside, on the gravel, the doctor suggested to the farmer the searching of the gentlemanly young fellow's pockets when the potion was doing its work.

But the farmer was a gentlemanly old fellow, and shook his head. "Time enough for that when there's a need for it, doctor," said he. "No doubt he'll be all right in the morning."

CHAPTER II.

The farm was called Cherry-Tree Farm, and Arnold stayed there till the harvest. They couldn't coax him to remember the essential things about himself. The doctor confessed that he didn't understand the case. It was the first one of the kind that had come his way. In all other respects save this, the young man seemed sound enough in mind and body. He could, for example, talk about politics very rationally, with opinions about the State in agreeable conformity with those of both the doctor and the farmer. But they couldn't induce him to remember his own line of life, family, place of abode, or-name.

His pockets told nothing. They contained an insurance company's memorandum-book, with no name in it, pipe, tobacco, knife, handkerchief,