bring the business nearer to genuine respectability. It showed sound economy, and the most censorious Puritan could not discover in those workrooms filled with listless children anything that pandered to the gratification of human pleasure. One could feel that when the fireworks left the factory there was nothing against their morality. Their explosion under the direction of Madame Oriano and drunken John Gumm was of course regrettably entertaining, but the rest of the business was impeccably moral. Not only did Caleb attend to the accounts, to the management of the workers, and to the judicious purchase of materials, but he also studied the actual art of pyrotechny, and early this very year he had discovered how to apply chlorate of potash to the production of more brilliant colours than any that had hitherto been seen. He had not yet revealed this discovery to Madame Oriano, because he was planning to use the knowledge of it as a means of persuading her to insist on Letizia’s marrying him. She would be so much astonished by the green he had evolved by combining nitrate of baryta with chlorate of potash that she would give him anything he demanded. And as for the red he could now produce by adding nitrate of strontia to his chlorate of potash, why, if such a red could only be bought in the ultimate depths of Hell, Madame would have to buy. The hackney-coach drew up in front of the dingy house in York Street, and by the time Caleb had done arguing with the driver about his fare mother and daughter had tumbled into bed. In spite of the nervous strain he had been enduring all night Caleb could not make up his mind to go to sleep himself. He was indeed feeling very much awake. It was now full day. The sunlight was glinting on the grimy railings of the area, and the footsteps of early workers shuffled past along the pavement at intervals. Caleb looked round the room and frowned at the tools lying idle on the tables and benches. He was filled with indignation at the thought that all those misbegotten apprentices should be snoring away these golden hours of the morning in their garret. He was too lenient with them, far too lenient. It would do the brats good to be awakened a little earlier than usual. He was up and dressed; why should they still be snoring? The back of his mind, too, itched with an evil desire to make somebody pay for what he had suffered last night. Caleb set off upstairs to rouse the apprentices. As he drew near the bedroom where Madame Oriano and Letizia slept together in that gilded four-poster which so much revolted his sense of decency, Caleb paused, for the door was wide open. He tried to keep his face averted while he hurried past; but his will failed him and, turning, he beheld the vision of Letizia, so scantily wrapped in her cloak of sky-blue that her white body appeared as shamelessly unclad as the vicious little Cupids that supported the canopy of the bed. Caleb staggered back.