sound of which had encouragement in it,--not hesitating, prudential, disheartening, like old Welby’s;--a friend besides who had bright, lambent-glowing eyes, which consoled what they looked at, and a soft voice----. In this, at least, Laurie was in luck. He met two or three people that night at the club, which was not of such lofty pretensions as White’s or Boodle’s, and called itself the Hiboux or the Hydrographic, I am not sure which,--a place where men were to be met with all the year through, and which was not deserted even in September. Laurie belonged to a grander club as well, but his dilettante tastes had made him proud of the Hiboux. And his friends collected round him to hear the news, and were very sympathetic, and approved of his intention to face his difficulties. ‘It may be the making of you, my dear fellow, as it was the making of Frank Pratt,’ said the man who wrote those papers in the ‘Sword’ which threw half the artists in England into convulsions. ‘Thanks,’ said Laurie; ‘you think you will have one more innocent to massacre.’ And he looked so fierce at the representative of literature that the audience was moved to a shout of laughter. It was not himself Laurie was thinking of, but the padrona, whose drawing this ruffian had reviled. He had disturbed a woman whose shoes he was not worthy to brush, Laurie said to himself, and avoided the reptile, with a bitterness worthy of his misdeeds. He could not eat his partridge in comfort under that fellow’s eye; who was not a brute by any means, and had a certain kindness for a young man in misfortune, even though he did write for the ‘Sword.’