snatched soul from body by the enemy. The reader is now cognizant of the mysterious business that fluttered these young hearts. We may add that their use of a dead language had another source besides the need for secrecy. No two of these ill-fated ones were natives of the same country, no two of them spoke a common speech. Such was the cosmopolitan fame of the Rabbi at whose feet they sat that he could pick his lads from Arctica to Cancer. We have already remarked that the supper drew to an end. The six had tried their manfullest to drown care, but they had found it impossible to get rightly drunk in the shadow of Death and of Hell. With despair for their toastmaster they drank every time the health of five, and thought the more that they spoke no word of the eternal ruin of the sixth. The roofless wretch outside was less to be pitied than these. They had discussed without hope every loophole of escape and hopeless rejected all. There was nothing for it now but to return home. The Rabbi would never have allowed them out so late on any less momentous eve, but he had no fear of losing them now they had run out their course of lessons. He had done his part, they had received their consideration, trust him to look after his own that keeps the tally of the damned. The reckoning had been adjusted to the satisfaction of the landlord, by the chairman of the feast. That youth (who was apparently a Bohemian by birth) now led his companions out of the house which some one of them was never to re-enter. And each turned back to look at it uncertain to what tune beggarly Fortune next might dance. They proceeded in the direction of the gallows we have already alluded to. Rain was still falling. The outlaw had disappeared, but will turn up later in our path. As they approached the grisly standard even the seasoned nerves of the sorcerers were troubled at the sight of its charge. They would have turned aside but for the Bohemian, who sturdily harangued them on their cowardice. "The Devil walk arm in arm with you! Is this the way you stand to your guns at the sight of a gutted envelope--of a cast peascod--you that are due in but a few hours' space to outfront the root of all evil! I tell you the pit is digging deep for him that shows such favour then. But my liver is of another colour. What, fear a sloughed garment, and more rags than ribbons at that! Why I have only to set my hand to it"----