the constable visited his premises by midnight. How the girls started at the first gentle tap at the door! How relieved were they when, having called from the window, they were told it was only a neighbour wanting to light his lamp! How dismayed again, when four men rushed in, the moment the door was opened, and made their way direct to the place where the sinner was pouring off his curdling soap into the troughs! There was nothing to be said,—no license to produce,— no tokens of having paid duty. The whole apparatus and product must be seized, and the man taken into custody, and the daughters left to comfort themselves, and explain the matter to the world in the best way they could. They dreaded the loss of money far more than the loss of character, which could hardly be great in a country where the population professes (judging by the duty) to use no more than 6½lbs. a head per annum; while it is well known that half a pound a week each is the lowest quantity actually consumed. In a country where three-quarters of the soap used is not duty-paid, there can be no very deep or extensive horror of the sin of illicit manufacture. It is far more likely that the ignorant poor should be thankful to him who, in their inability to make soap at home, enabled them to buy for 1½_d._ what the law would prevent their having for less than 6_d._ Even some rich might be found who would pronounce it a monstrous thing that, while the cost of making soap is only 12_s._ per cwt., the duty should be 28_s._, and the expense of excise interference 16_s._ more; but the rich are not concerned like the poor in this matter. Not only is cleanliness,—and so far health,—less difficult, less a matter of question to them, but they pay a much smaller proportion of the duty than the poor. The duty amounts to two-thirds of the price of the soap which the poor man buys, while it forms only an inconsiderable portion of the cost of the refined and scented soaps of the luxurious. While these things are so, who can wonder at the reliance of the illicit trader on the support and good will of society, and his expectation of being blamed for nothing worse than imprudence in carrying on his work in a place liable to detection? When the daughters had watched their father down the street, after helping to cleanse him from the tokens of his late toil, and had gone crying up to bed, knowing that a guard was left on their premises, Durell and the constable proceeded on another errand, much more painful.