Where there is real love there is always perfect trust, and Mr Bannister had confided the whole story of his life to the devoted girl who had laid her all at his feet; and it was that knowledge and the idea that she was to be torn from him for ever which had caused her terrible agitation and swoon on the occasion of my first visit to the house. Peter Hart duly received his sentence of twenty years, and Dick M^cQueen, the spider-killer, as I may name him, was avenged of his half-crown. THE SPOILT PHOTOGRAPH. The photographer had put up a rickety erection in shape of a tent close to the grand stand at Musselburgh race-course. He was a travelling portrait-taker, and his “saloon” was a portable one, consisting of four sticks for the corners and a bit of thin cotton to sling round them. There was no roof, partly from poverty and partly to let in more light. It was the first day of the races, and masses of people had been coming into the place by every train and available conveyance. The photographer’s name was Peter Turnbull—a tall, lanky fellow, like an overgrown boy who had never got his appetite satisfied. He was clad in the shabbiest of clothes, but talked with the stately dignity of an emperor or a decayed actor. In spite of the gay crowds pressing past outside, business did not come very fast to Turnbull, so, after waiting patiently inside like a spider for flies, he issued from his den and tried to force a little trade with his persuasive tongue. In front of his tent he had slung up a case of the best photographs he could pick up for money, which were likely to pass for his own, and occasionally some of those bent on pleasure paused to look at the specimens, when Turnbull at once tackled them to give him an order. Women he invariably asked to have their “beautiful” faces taken; men, who are not accustomed to be called beautiful, or to think themselves so, he manipulated in a different fashion. He appealed to them as to whether they hadn’t a mother who would like a portrait of them always beside her, or a sweetheart who would value it above a mountain of diamonds. Turnbull’s appearance was against him—he looked hungry down to the very toes of his boots—and most of those he addressed were as suspicious of his eloquence as of that of a book canvasser. At length, however, he did get a man to listen to him—a sailor, evidently, with a jovial, happy look about his face, and plenty of money in his pocket. “You’ll be just off your ship, I suppose, you’re looking so fresh and smart,” said Turnbull at a venture. “Your sweetheart will be pleased to see you, but she’d be more pleased if you brought her a good portrait to leave with her.” The sailor laughed heartily. “Sweetheart?” he echoed between his convulsions of merriment. “Why, I’m a married man.”