I sent over a posse of men one by one to the marked establishment, and when Smeaton and his companion appeared and ascended the stair I followed, and so closed up the retreat. They were not long gone. We heard the alarm, and some shouting and struggling, and soon saw Smeaton come scrambling out at the window on the roof by which he had entered, and come flying along the slates towards the hatch. As he got close my head popped out in front of him, and he started—staggered back with an oath—lost his footing, and vanished over the edge of the roof. He was picked up on the pavement below, very much injured and quite senseless, and borne on a shutter to the Infirmary, while his captured companion was marched over to the Office and locked up. Dinah, in ferocious joy over Smeaton’s accident, got drunk and disorderly, and was taken to the cells next day. Smeaton remained for the most part unconscious during two days and nights. Towards the close of the second day, a cab drove up to the Infirmary gate, and out of it stepped a young girl, so pale and feeble that every one thought it was a patient instead of a visitor who had arrived. It was Jessie Aimers, who had risen from bed and taken that long journey the moment she heard of the accident. She was helped in to the ward, and sat there with Smeaton’s hand in her own till evening, when he opened his eyes for a moment and hazily recognised her. “Oh, Jessie, I’ll never rise off this bed,” he feebly exclaimed; and then, as her warm tears rained down on his cheeks, and her lips were pressed to his own, he said—“Dinna! dinna dae that! I dinna deserve it. Pray for me, Jessie, lass; it’s a’ I can ask o’ ye now.” A screen had been put up round the bed, shutting them off from the gaze of the other patients, and inside that the nurses glanced occasionally. They remained there, whispering and communing till Smeaton relapsed again. Towards morning there was a cry, loud and piercing, behind the screen, but the night nurse was out of the ward at the moment. When she appeared, one of the patients spoke of the cry, and the nurse looked in on the pair. Jessie lay across the bed with her arms clasped tight about the patient, and her face hid in his bosom. Smeaton’s face was marble-like, his eyes half open and fixed. The nurse knew that look at a glance, and called to her companion that Smeaton was dead, and that she feared the young girl had fainted. Gently they tried to disengage the clasping fingers, that they might raise her and restore her to consciousness, but the deathly coldness of the thin hand caused them both to start back and exchange a look of inquiry and alarm. They bent over her, they listened; all was still—still as the grave, still as eternity. Jessie was dead. THE WRONG UMBRELLA.