'It wasn't all the fault of the piece,' retorted Turk manfully. 'We were both to blame. It isn't a first-rate piece. I can see that now; but there's merit in it, merit, my boy, although the subject is an unfortunate one. I've brought desolation upon more than one breast to-night.' He beat his own, and the action would have been ludicrous, but for the genuine tone in which he spoke. 'The author had set his all upon the hazard of the die, and I saw him rush from the side-wings, with the salt tears running down his face. What did I say I'd throw to-night, Chris, my boy? Double sixes? Well, I threw for both, and threw double blank. A nice bungler I am I! My mind's made up. Othello's occupation's gone! Turk West acts no more.' 'Nonsense, old fellow, nonsense!' his friends remonstrated. 'You'll think better of it.' 'I've said it,' cried Turk, with stern resolve. 'I act no more.' 'In that case,' said old Mac, in a tone of gloomy desperation, 'I'll take another glass of whisky-toddy. Little does the English stage know what it has lost this night!' CHAPTER XXXV. JESSIE'S BIRTHDAY. The morning of Jessie's birthday rose bright and clear. How well I remember it, and every trivial feature connected with it, which, apparently but little noted at the time, impressed itself indelibly upon my mind! Often afterwards, in thinking of that day--and how many, many times have my thoughts dwelt upon it I--a rift of light has pierced the black cloud which overshadowed it, and I have seen myself, as I stepped into the street soon after sunrise, stooping to pick up a pin which lay on the pavement. I have awoke in the night, sobbing in bitterest grief, and this smallest and most uneventful of incidents has been the clearest thing I have seen in connection with that day. Other incidents as trivial are clear to me--a costermonger wheeling his barrow, loaded with fruit; a policeman standing by a lamp-post chewing a piece of straw; a woman who brushed past me humming a line of a song. I see the exact arrangement of the fruit in the costermonger's barrow; the face of the policeman is as familiar to me as if he had been an intimate friend; I hear the few words the woman hummed, with the precise and delicate intonations she gave to them. And yet, had these incidents occurred at the North Pole, they could not have been more utterly disconnected from the great and sorrowful event which made the day memorable to me. My mother had not been well during the past week, and for a day or two had been compelled to keep her room. On one of these days I had gone to Mr. Rackstraw's office for Jessie, and had learned that she had left an hour before my arrival. Hastening home, I found her by my mother's bedside, nursing my mother. Hearing my step on the stairs, Jessie had come to the bedroom door, and had whispered to me indignantly: