he wasn't such a bad sort after all. There was a short wait at Albany before Fred's train continued on its journey to Montreal, and he went out and walked about, and thought the situation over, and wondered what was to be done. There was Fannie going to write to him, and he had promised to write to her, and-andwell, he certainly had said things during those past eight days that she might have misinterpreted, and he supposed there was no doubt she was really in love with him and believed that he entertained similar tender sentiments with respect to herself. There was certainly trouble in the prospect, and just how to get out of it, with honour to himself and consideration for Miss Portman, was the problem which occupied his thoughts pretty much to the exclusion of everything else.

Indeed, with such intentness was Mr. Fred Goodwin engaged in its consideration, and so little did the merely material affair of where he was walking engross his attention, that he walked out of the railway shed and fell down an embankment of some twenty feet or so into a lot of coal dust and tin cans and other equally unpleasant debris to tumble amongst. But he felt more comfortable after that, for it gave him something to swear at, which is always a relief in such cir

cumstances.

When Fred Goodwin reached Montreal his wife was at the station to meet him, with the children, and for the time Miss Fannie Portman was forgotten. But she came back to perplex him the next day, and occupied his thoughts fully as much as the business duties of the office.

There seemed but one way out of the difficulty-suicide. But Fred was not yet tired of living, nor altogether prepared to die, and he resolved to cease to exist only with respect to Miss Fannie Portman, of Buffalo, N.Y., and, of course, such friends of the latter to whom she might convey the sad intelligence.

So Fred Goodwin framed and ma

tured his plan. When it was fully developed he looked upon it and pronounced it good and proceeded to carry it into execution. He needed an accomplice, and the accomplice was procured. The latter was a printer, and between them the following death notice resolved itself into type, to be in due time mailed to Miss Portman:

DIED-In this city, on the 13th inst., Frederick George Goodwin, accountant, aged 29 years. Funeral from his late residence, Union ave., on Wednesday, the 15th inst., at 3 p.m., to Mount Royal Cemetery.

Now Frederick George Goodwin, as already related, had no intention whatever of departing this life so far as the world outside of the immediate circle of the Portmans, of Buffalo, was concerned, and he consequently did not have the above notice inserted in a newspaper. This was where the services of the printer accomplice came in, for the latter set the notice up in type, and ruled it off in the regular way, and set up other type round about it, and ran the reverse over some standing matter in one of the forms, and, behold! the result was for all the world like an ordinary newspaper clipping, torn out rather carelessly, with the notice of the death of Frederick George Goodwin marked with X's in pen and ink at the top corners, and fragments of other printed matter at the sides and top and bottom and on the other side as well.

This brief and mournful announcement was sent to Miss Fannie Portman, 801 Swan Street, Buffalo, accompanied by a much longer, but quite equally mournful pen-and-ink corroboration by the accomplice, in which it was stated that the departed had died very suddenly; that he had contracted a severe cold on the train from New York, which had developed into congestion of the lungs, and ended fatally within two days. As the end approached, added the letter (and even the cold ink seemed to grow soft and tearfullooking in sympathy)-as the end approached and the deceased realized that his moments were numbered, he had sent for the friend whose sad duty

it was now to pen these lines. To him he had confided the deep attachment he had formed for Miss Portman, and had charged him to faithfully convey to her his dying blessing and to tell her that his last thoughts, as his last words, were of his dearest Fannie.

"That ought to fix it," said Fred, as he and the accomplice completed the note and despatched it upon its way. "The poor girl will feel pretty bad for a time, I suppose, but it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. Anyway, she knew me for only a week, and will get over it after a while."

"Oh, she'll get over it, don't worry," comfortingly assured the accomplice, whose faith in the constancy of woman was not great.

But the next day it occurred to Fred that it was not all right yet, and that there remained something else to be attended to. What if Fannie, inconsolable, should want to come to Montreal to strew a flower or two on his grave and mingle her tears with those of his bereaved mother, and so should write to that mother (Fred had told her he had a mother living), or should write to some other of his relatives, whose addresses she might easily obtain through the medium of the directory !

Here were portentous possibilities, which demanded attention. He had already committed suicide; he must commit murder as well.

So Fred sat down and deliberately killed off his poor old mother-and she had been a good mother to him—and assassinated his uncle, and quietly removed his aunts and cousins, and left himself without a solitary relation in the wide world. Then he called in the accomplice again, and the latter copied it out into another letter to Fannie and told her, delicately, and in a manner full of sympathetic sadness, how it had occurred to him that Miss Portman might possibly desire to communicate with some of the late Mr. Goodwin's relatives. Unfortunately, Mr. Goodwin had no relatives living, at least none that the writer knew of.

His father had died several years before, and his mother had succumbed, quite unexpectedly, to heart disease only a few days ago-while, in fact, Mr. Goodwin was crossing the ocean. (The letter hinted that it might have been partly due to the shock of his mother's death that Mr. Goodwin's own ailment had ended fatally as it had.) An uncle of the deceased who had lived in Montreal, had recently died, and any other living relatives that he might have had were not now in Montreal, and were not known to the writer.

"There," said Fred, relieved, "that'll settle it anyway. It's not pleasant to have to kill so many people, but what else was there to be done?" And with this utilitarian consolation he slept better that night.

With all the threatening features of his little romance on the Atlantic thus happily disposed of, Fred proceeded to forget the incident, recalling it only in his lighter moments, and at such times only to smile quietly to himself over it and think what a tremendous fellow he could be among the women if he only tried. But of course he had no intention of trying; he was too loyal to Mrs. Fred for that. He did hope, though, that Fannie had not cut up too much over his death, and taken it to heart; for he was a sensitive and kindly man, was Fred, and could not endure the thought of another suffering on account of him.

It was perhaps a matter of two weeks after his return to Montreal that Fred stood one evening in the waiting-room of the Bonaventure depot in that city. He had escorted thither Mrs. Fred, who went to see a friend off on the Toronto train, and having stopped to say a word or two to a male acquaintance, had become momentarily separated from his better half and her companion.

He had finished his conversation and was turning around to rejoin them when-was it an apparition ?—there was Fannie Portman walking directly towards him. She was accompanied by a tall, dark gentleman, and they

had evidently just alighted from the western express.

In another moment she had seen him, and though she blushed slightly, and showed a momentary embarrassment, she came forward smiling with out-stretched hand.

"Why, Mr. Goodwin, how are you? I scarcely expected the pleasure of meeting an acquaintance so soon in a strange city." Whatever embarrassment she might have felt, none showed itself in her voice and smile.

Fred shook the proferred hand automatically, and automatically raised his hat and bowed. Automatically, too, he said "How do you do?" and never felt quite so uncomfortable in his life. It certainly was just a trifle embarrassing to be found alive after one's death notice had been sent out.

"You'll come around and see us, won't you, and show us around your city, Mr. Goodwin," she continued.

You know strangers are at a disadvantage in a new place. We shall be staying at the Queen's."

Fred promised he would, but without enthusiasm.

"Oh, I was forgetting. My husband-Mr. Wetmore-Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin came over with us on the Germanic, Jack. You remember Jessie speaking about him."

Mr. Wetmore did not remember, but was very glad, indeed, to make Mr. Goodwin's acquaintance, and hoped he would come and take dinner with them at the hotel the next evening, if he had no other appointment.

Unfortunately Fred had another appointment, but would be pleased to call some other time.

"Married!" mused Fred to himself after they had parted. Then he glanced quickly round for Mrs. Fred. Why hadn't he thought of it before, and got even by introducing his wife? It was too late now, however.

As Fred walked home that evening with the sharer of his joys and sorrows -such of them at least as he confided to her, the latter remarked upon his unaccustomed preoccupation. He was strangely plunged in silent cogitations,

As Fred sat in his little smoking room that evening, a sanctum into which Mrs. Fred seldom intruded, smoking his pipe with an earnestness which he seldom displayed at that or any other occupation, there rang at his door bell, and a minute or two later was ushered into his presence, his accomplice of the printing house. To Fred, absorbed in thoughts of Mrs. Wetmore-Miss Fannie Portman that

was there seemed a strange coin

cidence in this visit so soon after the meeting at the depot.

"Here's something that will interest you, Fred," announced the accomplice, smiling. "The fair Fannie of your ocean voyage is still waiting for the letter you promised her. She'll prob

ably be writing herself soon what's the matter."

to see

"I think not," said Fred quietly.

"Well, here is all our correspondence back again, anyway," continued the accomplice, "death notice, letter of condolence and all. 'Returned for better address. Not at 801 Swan Street' is stamped across the envelope, which seems to have been sent to the Dead Letter Office at Washington and opened. Sure Miss Portman told you

801 Swan street?"

Fred looked up his notebook and found upon examination that the address was 301, not 801. And as the Portmans did not live in Buffalo, but were simply visiting friends there, and accordingly were not known, the explanation of the returned letters was

easy.

Then Fred laughed. And when the accomplice had been told the story of the Bonaventure depot he laughed. After which both-particularly Fredhad many things to say of woman's fickleness and infidelity, of how a poor chap could never know when he was not being taken in and made game of, and of how Miss Fannie Portman must have been engaged to that other chap

all along, and was only amusing herself with Fred as a convenient means of pastime. Though on this latter point Fred was not so enthusiastic as the accomplice, for he had been taking some quiet pride in thinking, as has been mentioned, what a tremendous fellow among the women he might be if he tried.

The next day Fred left his card at the Queen's for Mr. and Mrs. Wetmore,

who, as it happened, were out when he called (which he had taken good care to see would happen). And some days afterwards, in a burst of confidence, he could not help telling the whole story to Mrs. Fred (with such few variations and embellishments as he considered essential to her full enjoyment of the narrative), and Mrs. Fred thought it was a capital joke indeed.

the men who have the votes to

give are usually spoken of as the "free and independent" electors. The words may be used with a certain amount of mental reservation, there may be a good deal of mockery lurking in them; but, whether they are called so in express terms or not, electors do like to think themselves free and independent. Of course they are not. Everyone knows that they are not, and they know it themselves; but it sounds well. There is no such thing as absolute liberty upon this earth any more than there is equality; and fraternity does not improve its chances. Anyone who yearns to be entirely free had better set up for himself upon a desert island where he can be like Robinson Crusoe or Alexander Selkirk, "monarch of all he surveys, -a style of living which approaches remarkably near to the luxury of penal servitude, to such an extent do extremes meet. The conventionalities of the world, the usages of society, the opinions and wishes of the rest of mankind curtail everyone's freedom to some extent; and in politics men depend to a very large extent upon party platforms which are built for them by others. They think they make their own opinions for them

they make their own clothes; they put them on ready made, and they don't always fit.

Would it do to have no party platforms? Would things get on any better if there was no such thing as party organization or canvassing? Supposing it were possible for an election to be suddenly sprung upon an unprepared community; supposing a certain number of candidates were presented to the people, whose personal characters were better known to them than their politics, and each free and independent voted according to the promptings of his own inner consciousness, would the electors know which way their representative would go on any particular question? and would the representative know which way his constituents expected him to go? And in a House composed of members thus elected, what difficulties there would be in forming well defined parties! They would divide one way upon one question and another upon another, and the Government would be hard put to it to know whether they had the confidence of the House or not, and whether the House had the confidence of the country or not.

In some primitive states of society