He was directed, as a short cut, down one of those narrow passages at the entrance of which posts are placed as an indication that they are appropriated solely to foot-passengers. A dead white wall, which screened the garden of the physician of the place, ran on one side; a high fence to a nursery-ground was on the other; the passage was lonely, for it was now the hour when few persons walk either for business or pleasure in a provincial town, and no sound was heard save the fall of his own step on the broad flagstones. At the end of the passage in the main street to which it led, he saw already the large, smart, showy shop, with the hot sum shining full on the gilt letters that conveyed to the eyes of the customer the respectable name of "Morton,"--when suddenly the silence was broken by choked and painful sobs. He turned, and beneath a _compo portico_, jutting from the wall, which adorned the physician's door, he saw a child seated on the stone steps weeping bitterly--a thrill shot through Philip's heart! Did he recognise, disguised as it was by pain and sorrow, that voice? He paused, and laid his hand on the child's shoulder: "Oh, don't--don't--pray don't--I am going, I am indeed:" cried the child, quailing, and still keeping his hands clasped before his face. "Sidney!" said Philip. The boy started to his feet, uttered a cry of rapturous joy, and fell upon his brother's breast. "O Philip!--dear, dear Philip! you are come to take me away back to my own--own mamma; I will be so good, I will never tease her again,--never, never! I have been so wretched!" "Sit down, and tell me what they have done to you," said Philip, checking the rising heart that heaved at his mother's name. So, there they sat, on the cold stone under the stranger's porch, these two orphans: Philip's arms round his brother's waist, Sidney leaning on his shoulder, and imparting to him--perhaps with pardonable exaggeration, all the sufferings he had gone through; and, when he came to that morning's chastisement, and showed the wale across the little hands which he had vainly held up in supplication, Philip's passion shook him from limb to limb. His impulse was to march straight into Mr. Morton's shop and gripe him by the throat; and the indignation he betrayed encouraged Sidney to colour yet more highly the tale of his wrongs and pain. When he had done, and clinging tightly to his brother's broad chest, said-- "But never mind, Philip; now we will go home to mamma." Philip replied--