general, that is to say, when Ronny would be the chief speaker, and when he would tell, in his quavering little voice, of the wonderful and terrible things he had seen in the New York slums. Jacynth, moved with pity for the white terror portrayed on Fenella’s face, would essay to divert his attention to other topics. He could not, however, prevent the child from narrating to his mother the manner in which he had been ultimately found and rescued. “They wouldn’t let me go out of the room,” he said earnestly; “we was all together in a room upstairs, oh, up such a lot of stairs; Mick, that was the man’s name, and Bridget and me. It was only one room, and that was all our house; the other people only had one room for all their house, too, and they gave me a horrid old mattress in the corner to sleep on, and I had no toys, not the least little bit of a toy to play with, and I did get so tired all day long, and it smelt so horrid in the room, you can’t think; and one day Bridget thumped me on the head with a plate--there was only two plates she had--and it broke all to pieces; and I cried so, you can’t think; I cried, and I cried, and I asked God to send you to me, mummy; I went on asking Him and begging Him all the time. But I don’t think He heard me, for there was lots more rooms and more ceilings; oh, ever so many over ours before you got to the roof. And one day there was someone knocked at the door; a great loud knock, and Bridget called out, ‘There’s the black man come for you; hide for your life, you spalpeen’--she often called me a spalpeen--and I was so frightened, I ran to my mattress, and Bridget threw a horrid old dress over me and nearly smothered me. Mick wasn’t there, and what do you think? When the men came in, I heard a voice that wasn’t a bit like a black man’s voice. I’d often heard the black men talking, you know. There was a black butler where I was staying before in New York, but this voice wasn’t a bit like that; and so I just peeped, like this, from under the clothes; and, oh, mummy, there was Mr. Jacynth and a lot of policemen standing inside the room, and I gave a great shriek--didn’t I, Mr. Jacynth? and I kicked away the dress, and I rushed right to where Mr. Jacynth was standing, and I held to his legs--I did; and he took me right up and kissed me. I put my arms round his neck, and I cried and sobbed fit to break my heart; and what do you think, mummy? [Ronny’s voice conveyed unnumbered notes of emphatic exclamation.] Mr. Jacynth was crying, too; he was; _I seed him_.” He might have added “as you are crying now, mother,” for as the climax of the narrative was reached, Fenella broke down completely, and instinctively held out her hand to the savior of her little boy. Jacynth could not refrain from pressing his lips to it, and the action conveyed a thousand times more than the courtly old custom is wont to convey under ordinary circumstances. Ronny, overcome by the