personal belongings which is peculiarly strong in youth. And then he went home with the consciousness of having done a good action, which is also peculiar to his age, making his heart and step still more buoyant. It was a sort of seal to all his well-being, to his majority, to his new and complete independence. On this first day of perfect manhood (as he thought) to have served a fellow-creature, to have perhaps delivered a soul out of pressing danger, anyhow to have secured the poor man’s safety and that of his money till he should be fit to look after himself. Poor old fellow, what a pity! Was it possible he could have nobody to take care of him? And what, with that cheerful, humorous face so full of good temper and geniality, could he have done to merit imprisonment for fourteen years? John, whose conscious life was almost included in that term, shivered as he thought of it. To be shut up in prison for fourteen years, and then to come out of it, and find no friendly face, no hand to meet his, but only those of Joe! Next day, however, John was sent away to look after some work which was going on at a distance, and when that was completed the time had arrived when his leave of absence began, and he was free to go to Edgeley. The press of work, and then the rush of other interests and commotion, drove the poor man whom he had succoured out of his mind. He had intended vaguely to go to Mrs. Bentley’s to inquire after him when he returned to town; but with the visit to Edgeley before him, and all the rising of things new and old in his mind, it was not wonderful if this momentary interest failed. A vague surprise that the man himself had taken no notice, also went across the surface of his thoughts, but this he soon perceived was somewhat unreasonable, since there was little ground for thinking that he was at all aware who his helper was, or whether in reality anything had been done for him. John had scarcely time indeed to think of the matter at all, until he was travelling, in the seclusion of a railway-carriage to Edgeley, a moment in which all the omissions and forgetfulness of an immediate past are apt to come into our heads. But they did not last long in John’s. He was going--back. He could not call it home, after four years--having in the meantime no knowledge, save by letters at long intervals, as to what the changes were which he might find there. Susie had excused herself from accompanying him, but had promised to follow in a day or two, and John had secured for himself a lodging at Mrs. Sibley’s, where Mr. Cattley still was. The very names gave him a thrill of feeling: to pronounce them lightly again as everyday matters seemed so strange. The first return after a long absence is not like any other. When it becomes a matter of use and wont to go and come, the mind gets accustomed to the thought that life goes on in many places at a time, almost entirely unaffected by its own presence and absence.