five years and then suddenly died, leaving the two girls, then respectively nineteen and nine years of age, to mourn her loss, and, friendless as they were, to fight their way in the hard world.

Mrs. Smithers had been a saving woman, and, on her death, it was found that, after paying all debts, there remained a sum of £600 for the two girls to live on, and nothing else; for their mother's fortune died with her. Now, it will be obvious that the interest arising from £600 is not sufficient to support two young people, and therefore Augusta was forced to live upon the principal. From an early age, however, she had shown a strong literary tendency, and shortly after her mother's death she published her first book, at her own expense. It was a dead failure, and cost her fifty-two pounds, the balance between the profit and loss account. After a while, however, Augusta recovered from this blow, and wrote "Jemima's Vow," which was taken up by Meeson's; and strange as it may seem, proved the success of the year. Of the nature of the agreement into which she entered with Meeson's the reader is already informed, and he will not therefore be surprised to learn that under its cruel provisions, notwithstanding her name and fame, Augusta was absolutely prohibited from reaping the fruits of her success. She could only publish with Meeson's, and at the fixed pay of seven per cent. on the advertised price of her work. Now, something over three years had elapsed since the death of Mrs. Smithers, and it will therefore be obvious that there was not much remaining of the £600 which she had left behind her. The two girls had, indeed, lived economically enough in a couple of small rooms in a back street; but their expenses had been enormously increased by the serious illness, from a pulmonary complaint, of little Jeannie, now

D

a child between twelve and thirteen years of age. On that very morning, Augusta had seen the doctor and been. crushed into the dust by the expression of his conviction, that, unless her sister was moved to a warmer climate, for a period of at least a year, she would not live through the winter, and might die at any moment.

He might as well

Alas, she had

Take Jeannie to a warmer climate! have told Augusta to take her to the moon. not the money and did not know where to turn to get it! Reader, pray to Heaven that it may never be your lot to see your best beloved die for the want of a little miserable money wherewith to save her life!

It was in this terrible emergency that she had-driven thereto by her agony of mind-tried to get something beyond her strict and legal due out of Meeson's-Meeson's, that had made hundreds and hundreds out of her book and paid her fifty pounds. We know how she fared in that attempt. On leaving their office, Augusta bethought her of her banker. Perhaps he might be willing to advance something. It was a horrible task, but she determined to undertake it; so she walked to the bank and asked to see the manager. He was out, but would be in at three o'clock. She went to a shop near and got a bun and glass of milk, and waited till she was ashamed to wait any longer, and then walked about the streets till three o'clock. At the stroke of the hour she returned, and was shown into the manager's private room, where a dry, unsympatheticlooking little man was sitting before a big book. It was not the same man whom Augusta had met before, and her heart sank proportionately.

What followed need not be repeated here. The manager listened to her faltering tale with a few stereotyped expressions of sympathy, and, when she had done, "regretted "

that speculative loans were contrary to the custom of the bank, and politely bowed her out.

It was nearly four o'clock upon a damp drizzling afternoon, a November afternoon that hung like a living misery over the black slush of the Birmingham streets, and would in itself have sufficed to bring the lightest-hearted, happiest mortal to the very gates of despair, when Augusta, wet, wearied, and almost crying, at last entered the door of their little sitting-room. She came in very quietly, for the maid-of-all-work had met her in the passage and told her that Miss Jeannie was asleep. She had been coughing very much about dinner-time, but now she was asleep.

There was a fire in the grate, a small one, for the coal was economised by means of two large fire-bricks, and on a table (Augusta's writing-table), placed at the further side of the room, was a paraffin-lamp turned low. Drawn up in front, but a little to one side of the fire, was a sofa, covered with red rep, and on the sofa lay a fairhaired little form, so thin and fragile that it looked like the ghost or outline of a It was Jeannie, her sick Augusta stole softly up to little face that her eyes fell ingly thin, with long curved a mouth shaped like a bow. which the chisel of Pain knows so well how to carve, were smoothed out of it now, and in their place lay the shadow of a smile.

girl, rather than a girl herself. sister, and she was asleep. look at her. It was a sweet on, although it was so shocklashes, delicate nostrils, and All the lines and grooves,

Augusta looked at her and clenched her fists, while a lump rose in her throat, and her grey eyes filled with tears. How could she get the money to save her? The year before a rich man, a man who was detestable to her,