wealthy or the well-dressed are concerned on one side, and the poor and the ragged on the other. Then, whither can this pauperised despairing man in Lock's Fields go to escape the bitterness of his reflections? To the public-house—or to throw himself into the canal:—those are the only alternatives! Is it not dreadful to think that we have a sovereign and a royal family on whom the country lavishes money by hundreds of thousands,—whose merest whims cost sums that would feed and clothe from year to year _all_ the inhabitants of such a place as Lock's Fields;—that we have also an hereditary aristocracy and innumerable sleek and comfortable dignitaries of the Church, who devour the fruits of the earth and throw the parings and the peelings contemptuously to the poor;—in a word, that we have an oligarchy feasting upon the fatted calf, and flinging the offal to the patient, enduring, toiling, oppressed millions,—is it not dreadful, we ask, to think how much those millions do for Royalty, Aristocracy, Church, and Landed Interest, and how little—how miserably little, Royalty, Aristocracy, Church, and Landed Interest do for _them_ in return? But let us go back to Thomas Rainford and the little boy, whom we left on their way to Lock's Fields—for it was to this district that the excellent-hearted man was leading his young charge. And, as they went along, many were the kind words that Tom Rain uttered to cheer his artless companion. "Come, don't cry, my dear little fellow," he would say: "here is another cake—and when we get home you shall have something nice for supper. Are you cold, Charley? Well, you shall soon warm yourself by the side of a good blazing fire. And to-night you shall sleep in a soft bed; and to-morrow morning you shall have some new clothes. I am going to take you where you will find a pretty lady, who will be as kind to you as the mamma you have just lost. Are you tired, Charley? Well, I'll take you up and carry you." And Tom Rain lifted the poor child in his arms and kissed away the tears which ran down his cheeks. The boy threw his little arms around the neck of his kind protector, and said, "Oh! you are as good to me as my dear papa was." "And how long has your papa been dead, Charley?" asked Rainford, supposing that the child meant by his father the husband of the woman who had died that evening in Toby Bunce's house. "Not very long—but I don't know how long," was the reply. "Oh! stay—I think I heard mamma say this morning that he died six months ago." "And where did you live then, Charley?" "At a cottage near a great town—Oh! I remember—Winchester." "Winchester!" cried Rainford. "I know all that part of the country well—or at least I ought to do so," he murmured to himself, with a profound sigh. "But what made you leave your cottage?"