and a gleam of pleasure danced for a moment in her eyes, to be succeeded by a glance at the pale face of her mother, hardly less white than the pillow on which it rested. I beckoned to her. She quickly understood my meaning, rose, and, with a noiseless tread, followed me from the room. I determined to take advantage of the mother's drugged sleep, and give the poor child a change from the depressing monotony of the sick-room.

"We set out for a walk then, Lily gradually resuming her old sunny manner. Not far from the house were then open fields. I speak of some years back, remember. In a cutting through these ran the Birmingham Railway, and it was a great delight to the child to sit on the well-turfed slope of the cutting and watch the trains as they dashed past to and fro. To this spot, then, we once more directed our steps, took our seats, and commenced counting the lines of carriages which the shrieking engine whirled away from us. Lily was busy, too, making daisy-chains, and tying up bouquets of clover, and decking me with wild flowers.

"For a few minutes my thoughts wandered back into the past, to my counting-house life-to my deep love-to my dead wife-to my lost son. Then I thought of that angry sick woman, racked by her fierce jealous passions; and lastly of the poor child Lily, whom I was forbidden to love, who was forbidden to love me, and whose company I could only enjoy by stealth. I started from my reverie. I looked round for Lily. To my horror, I found that she had descended the incline, and, in her anxiety for daisies, had wandered on to the line of the railway, and was plucking them close to the very rails. I called to her in an agony. She looked up with a crow of delight, holding overhead a little bunch of daisies. Then-then-O God! came the hideous shriek—the whirling train grinding on its grim iron way! She saw her danger, gave a little scream of terror, and hurried back towards the slope. Too late! too late! The monstrous engine struck her cruelly. She was flung forward several yards on to the side of the cutting; a terrible wound was shining on her forehead, and the red blood clogging and soiling her golden hair.

"Half swooning with fright, I hurried towards her; a look of suffering and alarm was upon her face-with mouth half open, showing the tiny pearly teeth within, and eyes staring under raised and rigid brows. I felt for her heart's beating, but could detect no pulsation. Not a soul was near to proffer aid or counsel. The train had hurried by this time a mile away; my heart was throbbing with a violence that was exquisitely painful, my head burned, and strange shapes seemed to dance before my eyes. I knew that she was dead, yet I would not know it.

"I took her in my arms-heavy and motionless, with swinging limbs -God, how it sickened me to see her so!-and ran back all the way to my house. A superhuman strength seemed given me to accomplish this, or perhaps I should say rather the force of insanity assisted me, for at that moment I felt I was mad.

"She stood at the door-step-up and dressed, and leaning on her stick

-wan and pale, with dark circles round her great staring eyes, and the red light burning fiercely in them. She thrust forth her thin trembling hand as she saw me.

"Where is the child?" she said, her fingers clutching out claw-wise. "Be calm; pray compose yourself,' I murmured, as well as I was able. "Where is she?' she shrieked. What has happened? Lily! Lily! Give her me.'

"Her glance fell upon the dead child in my arms. I covered over with my hand the poor head, lest she should see the red stains among the silky curls. She was too quick for me.

"Take away your hands. Lilian, my own-my own, own darling. Monster, you have murdered her! O God! see the blood upon his hands -he has killed her.'

"With the scream of one insane, she flung herself upon me and tore away the child. She hugged the body tight to her heart, and kissed the wounded head till her white face was blotched and stained with blood. Suddenly she swooned back and fell heavily on the floor, still clasping the dead child to her heart. She never spoke sensibly again. She lived through that night and the following day; but she died the next evening, with the child still in her arms. One grave contained them both, and I was left alone-how sad, God only knows."

It was some days after, and I was in my accustomed seat in the Garden, when some one touched my arm. It was Old Daisy, very pale

and broken.

"And Lily?" he asked.

His eyes wandered round as he spoke, and fell upon some of Lily's children-playmates, dressed in deep mourning. He tottered back. "Dead! dead!" he said. "Again and again."

I besought him to take comfort; he stopped me with an abrupt gesture. "You don't know all," he said. "What if I have killed her. In the house I occupy, the fever has been raging. Could I refuse to render what aid I could to the sick? I carried contagion about with me; yet, pity me-forgive me. I have taken that child and fondled her in my arms! Now, call me murderer, and let me go."

He gazed at me steadily for a minute, then slowly sunk back into his old petrified manner.

"You know the old fellow that used to come here so often in the brown coat-took snuff-carried a walking-stick? You know him, sir?" It was the Temple gardener who was speaking. "Well, a curious thing, yesterday morning he seemed just the same as usual, sat at his old seat in his quiet way-nothing remarkable about him; but he left rather earlier, and had not got farther than Fleet Street before he fell downdead, sir, stone dead. Wasn't it curious?-The chrysanthemums come on finely, don't they, sir?"

Three Times.

FIRST time I saw my Love, my eyes
Were gladdened with a sweet surprise;
There woke a thought that never dies,
That bright June morning.

A vision, fairly clad in white,
Dawned softly, freshly on my sight,
And in her hand were roses bright,-
June roses,-pure from speck or blight,
My Love's adorning !

Last time I saw my Love, she lay
All pale, all silent, cold as clay;
The light of life had died away;

Oh, sad and sweet last time!
And still she wore a robe of white,

And on her pillow, lightly prest,
And in the hand that lay at rest,
Solemnly, on her peaceful breast,
Were roses,-buds not opened quite,-
Gathered before their prime.

A tender care had laid them there;
But my dead Love was far more fair.

Next time I see my Love, I know
A glorious garment, white as snow,
On which no stains of earth can show,-
A garment meet for heaven,-
Will robe the form I long to see :
My angel-love, who waits for me,
And holds a palm of victory

For earth's white roses given.

A. DONALDSON.

TEMPLE BAR.

JUNE 1861.

The Seven Sons of Mammon.

A STORY.

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

A

CHAPTER XVI.

MRS. CESAR DONKIN.

S a freeborn Englishman, of full age, unconvicted of any offence, and with means amply sufficient to defray any costs or charges, you might be desirous, I assume, to obtain board and lodging in a genteel family where, at a moderate outlay, all the comforts, luxuries, and refinements of life were offered. Turning over the supplement of a great daily journal, a well-worded advertisement informed you as to the place where that board and lodging with its concomitants might be obtained. Mrs. Cæsar Donkin was a lady of much experience in advertising, and was generally fortunate enough to secure a left-hand top-corner. To see herself there on a fine Monday morning in the boarding and lodging season was, next to affixing a receipt to a bill for a month's hospitality, her chief delight. To ladies and gentlemen seeking a truly English home her doors stood widely open. You were to apply, by letter only, post-paid, to Omicron, care of Mr. Tryfell, pastrycook, Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Ticonderago Square. The highest references were offered and required; and as regards the first, a letter to Omicron very speedily brought about an interview with Mrs. Cæsar Donkin, who referred you to the pastry cook, to several neighbouring tradesmen, to a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church residing in the immediate neighbourhood of the Giant's Causeway, Ireland, and to herself. To look at Mrs. Cæsar Donkin was generally found sufficient. You made up your mind and boarded, or didn't board, after five minutes' parley. As to your own references, a month's payment in advance was held by Mrs. Cæsar Donkin to be far more conclusive of a candidate's respectability than any number

VOL. II.

U

of testimonials from peers of the realm, members of Parliament, or dignitaries of the Church. But there was a proviso, there was a saving clause, there was one little requirement which the hostess of 15 Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace expected you to fulfil; and if you were unable to do so, a gentleman might just as well hope to occupy a front parlour furnished in Buckingham Palace, with partial board from the royal kitchen, and Phipps the Ineffable to officiate as a boy in buttons, as to become an inmate of Mrs. Cæsar Donkin's boarding-house. She received no gentleman under sixty years of age. Above that age, she gave ample scope and verge enough,-she would have welcomed Methusaleh with affable gladness,-but sixty was her minimum. Her rule was inflexible. The laws of the Medes and Persians might have been summed up in her advertisement. She never departed from its terms. Read it. OARD AND RESIDENCE.-In the immediate vicinity of Kensington Gardens, the Marble Arch, Madame Tussaud's Exhibition, and within an easy distance of Kensal-Green Cemetery, and other fashionable places of amusement, all the comforts of home and the luxuries of refined life are offered, by a lady moving in the first circles, to ladies and gentlemen of means and position. The highest references given and required. Address, by letter only, post-paid, to Omicron,' care of Mr. Tryfell, pastrycook, Bergen-op-Zoom Terrace, Ticonderago Square. N.B. No gentleman under sixty need apply.

BOARD

The sting of the announcement was in this caudal postscript. You might be as rich as Croesus, but unless you were sixty Mrs. Cæsar Donkin would have nothing to say to you. Once, and once only, she had relaxed her rule, and had consented to receive a battered East Indian reputed to be enormously rich, and who would only own to fifty-nine. Mr. Jaghire stayed many months. He went away one morning to Malvern to drink the waters. He didn't come back. After the lapse of about a year, he wrote to Mrs. Caesar Donkin, professedly from some unpronounceable place in Hindostan, whither he had proceeded, he said, in the hope of repairing his fortune, which had been grievously injured by disastrous speculations in indigo. He entreated her to take the greatest care of a very old and ragged shawl dressing-gown, and of a hubblebubble pipe much damaged, which, with a file of the Bengal Hurkaru, and a slack-baked looking cat called Ginger, were the only chattels he had left in Bergenop-Zoom Terrace. The slack-baked cat he requested Mrs. Donkin to accept as a present. He talked of making her speedy remittances,-of sending her draughts at sight, jars of chutnee, kincobs, uncut gems, all the wealth of the Indies for aught that appeared,-but he regretted that at present, owing to "the infamous conduct of his agents," he was unable to send any thing. Stay: he sent his compliments, and had the honour to inform Mrs. Caesar Donkin that he was forty-five next birthday.

The dismal falling-off of this depraved Anglo-Indian-it was years before the mutiny, but he must have been Nana Sahib in disguise-was a