Aroused by the violent banging of the street door, Mrs. Chester starts from the bed. The rain is softly pattering in the street, and she hears the sound of uncertain footsteps groping up the stairs. "It is the new lodger," she murmurs. "He might have made less noise with the door." Then, rubbing her eyes, she calls, "Sally, are you awake?" Sally hears her mother's voice through a mist of softly falling rain, and murmuring some indistinct words in reply, cuddles closer to her treasure-baby, and the next moment is asleep again. "The brute!" exclaims Mrs. Chester. "Waking the children with his row! I'll talk to him to-morrow." Standing in the dark, she listens. The person who is ascending the stairs to the bedroom in the upper part of the house staggers and stumbles on his way. Thus much Mrs. Chester is conscious of, but she does not hear his low moans, nor see him shake and tremble, as he drags his feet along in fear and dread. When he reaches his room, he falls, dressed, upon the bed, and claws at the air, and picks at the bedclothes in ceaseless unrest, being beset by demons of every shape and form, presenting themselves in a thousand monstrously-grotesque disguises. Mrs. Chester has heard sufficient to cause her to form a just conclusion. "Drunk of course," she murmurs; "and Dick'll be as bad when he comes home." Then she lights a candle, and patiently resumes her task of stitching and patching. CHAPTER VI. SALLY ALSO HAS A DREAM. Sounds of music in the air; strange and fantastic shapes and forms; blooming flowers, and grass of rarest shades of green; glittering water, for white swans and paper ships to sail on; waving branches laden with dew-diamonds; birds flying on silver threads that reach from heaven to earth; and standing in the midst of all these wonders, little Sally Chester herself, in her ragged clothes. Comes a procession from the skies, heralded by a glittering white star, which widens into an avenue of light, through which the actors move. Comes a small drummer-boy in the British army, with a drum slung round his shoulders; behind him trots a donkey, familiar to the neighbourhood, who smiles grotesquely at Sally, and asks her when she is going to faint dead away again. The entire contents of a toy and cake shop follow the eccentric donkey. First appear the royal beefeaters, represented by men cut out of rich brown gingerbread, with features formed of Dutch metal, their legs and arms also being magnificently slashed with strips of the same; their features are diabolical, but this does not lessen their attractiveness. Then come a legion of wooden dolls, with not a vestige of clothing on their bodies, their staring expressionless features testifying to their shamelessness and their indifference to public opinion; then the animals from Noah's arks, so indiscriminately coupled as to betray a disgraceful Scriptural ignorance; then tin soldiers on slides, their outstretched