as she could bear it. She had asked Roger the day before to come up for some pence to buy chips and coal, and he had promised readily to do it, but he did not come. She had just chips enough to kindle the fire, and sufficient coal to keep it alight till Bess or her father should come home. But she could not help wondering what cruelty of his father's was keeping him away, as she watched the tiny tongues of flame, which had to be carefully cherished lest they should die out altogether before the coal was lit. She felt hopeful and happy. The late February days were come, and the sky was clearer; the dense fogs were almost gone for another spell of brighter weather, and the clouds that still hung grey above the streets had gleams of blue breaking through them. The deepest misery of the year was over. The days were longer and would soon be warmer; there was no dreary mid-winter to tide over. Victoria, watching her small fire, not quite kindled yet, sang feebly to herself in a piping, tremulous voice, and her wan face wore a brighter smile than it had done for months. Why, there's father comin' up the stairs," she exclaimed; "he's more than an hour early!' whatever he could ha' meant by it, I could never make out yet. I've puzzled over it many and many a hour. If he'd said as cold as creases, or yet as green as creases, I could ha' understood. But as rich as creases, Victoria, my dear!' "Don't ask me, father," she answered; "I'm no scholar. We've lived on creases, but we've never got rich on 'em." "Ay, we've lived and died on 'em," said Euclid contemplatively. "If we could have all the money as ever we spent, all that's gone in rent, and victuals, and clothin' and ceterer, we might, maybe, ha' grown rich by creases; but then where should we ha' been?' Victoria had lifted up her pillow as he spoke, half to himself and half to her. She stood for an instant gazing down in bewilderment. The old cotton handkerchief, once white with a red border round it, but grown yellow and dingy with age, and with much. knotting and unknotting; the familiar little bundle that had been her father's purse ever since she could remember, did not lie in its accustomed place. She pushed aside the parcel of rags which served Bess as a pillow, but it was not there. She shook the clothes with a trembling hand, and then sank down on the bedstead, sick and faint with alarm. "Father," she breathed in a low, gasping voice, "it's gone!" It was Euclid who came in with an empty basket and a pleased face. He had had uncommon good luck, he said, as he sat down before the fire, and stretched his wrinkled old hands over the flame and smoke. He For a moment old Euclid gazed at her in had been reckoning up as he came along a dreamy, absent manner, muttering "As home, and he could spare seven-pence half-rich as creases!" as though he did not hear penny to add to the hoard, and so make it level money. Euclid was always uneasy in his mind when his deposit was not level Now Bess was away, and sure to money. be away for another hour or more, he could count the money over, and feast his eyes upon it: the only pleasure he had in the world. "It does my old heart good, Victoria, my dear," he said, turning up the old sofa cover on end; "it's as if it made up for all the pipes I never smoke, and the victuals I never eat, and the sights as I never see. Make the door fast, my dear, and you and me'll have a treat." Victoria fastened the door with a forked stick, brought from the market, laughing a low, quiet laugh, in which Euclid joined hoarsely yet heartily. It was as great a treat to him to hear her laugh as to count up his her speak. Father," she cried again, in a louder our money's gone! "Gone!" he repeated. tone, "It's not here!" she answered; "it's been stolen, stolen! I remember now. There was a click of the door, after I'd fallen asleep, and I called out 'Good-bye, father!' and it was a thief! Oh, father, father! what shall we do?" Euclid had started to his feet and stood trembling and shivering with the shock of terror. Gone! Stolen ! The little hoard of money he had scraped together, with so many hardships and cares, so much labour and self-denial! The money he might want before the bleak winds of March were gone, to bury his last child in her own coffin! Was it possible that God would allow a thief to steal in and rob him of such a sacred treasure? Euclid's heart answered, Yes, it was possible, it had come to pass, this overwhelming disaster, and his very soul seemed to die within him. He sat down again in his broken old chair, for he felt too feeble to hold himself up, and he hid his withered, ashy-pale face in his hands. All the misery, and privation, and pinching poverty of his sixty years of life seemed to rush back upon him and roll like a full tide over his crushed spirit. After all his toil and suffering he would be forced to go upon the parish, if not to-day or this week—well, in a few weeks, or in a few months at the farthest. He might as well give up at once, for he could never save so much money again. And Victoria! Now, if she should fall ill, even a little worse, she must be taken away from him, and go into the workhouse hospital, to die there among strange, bad women, uncared for, weeping her last bitter tears on a parish pillow! Whilst he, parted from her, was perhaps laying his old grey head on another parish pillow, and turning his face to the wall to hide his bitter feet over his old rounds, crying "Cre-she! cre-she!" mournfully, as if by some cruel magic a spell had been cast over him, and he was doomed to tread the dreary streets, with bowed down head and dragging limbs, uttering no other word but "Cre-she!" His eyes discerned nothing save Victoria being carried before him in a parish coffin. He did not even see Blackett, on the evening of his return from his expedition after work, after a week's absence, lying in wait to watch him come home, and jeering after him as he shambled along the passage and up the stairs. It had been a hard day's work for Euclid, Bess and he was long behind his time. and Victoria had been looking out for him anxiously the last hour or more and they made much of him, as if they could not do enough to comfort him. But he sat silent and downcast, and only shook his shaggy grey head despondently when Victoria gave him a cup of tea. "Daddy," she said, "what's ailin' you?" "You know, Victoria!" he answered sadly and reproachfully. "God hasn't helped my poor old legs to keep you and me off the parish. Your poor mother when she lay a-dyin', with you on her poor arm, she said as she were sure He'd do as much as that; and He hasn't." "Have you been to ask help of the parish?" inquired Bess, with eyes round with wonder and alarm. "No, no, child, not yet!" he replied, a tinge of brownish red creeping over his grim yet pale face; "it's not come to that as yet. But as I come down the street here in the dusk, there walked alongside of me a parish. funeral; not a real funeral, only the shadow of one, as you may say; and I knowed it were Victoria's-it were Victoria's," he repeated, his voice breaking down into a sob. "Father!" cried Victoria, "daddy! how do you know as I shall want a funeral or a coffin ?" Euclid lifted up his head, and checked his sobs, gazing at the only child left to him with his dim old eyes half blinded with tears. Not want a coffin !" repeated Euclid in- and rough, coarse manners of this crowd credulously. No," she said with a faint smile. "I think the thought of it has helped to make me ill. I could go to the court after the money was stole, and I were none the worse for it; and the p❜leece has been here to bid us go again to-morrow, and I feel quite sharp, and stirred up like. And I've slept sounder since the money's been gone away from under my head. It was always sayin' quietly in my ear, 'I'm goin' to buy you a coffin! I'm a-goin' to buy a coffin for you!' And then I'd dream of my funeral, and you being left all alone, father. No, God doesn't mean | me to want a coffin yet, I think." Old Euclid sat motionless and speechless, his bowed head lifted up, and his hands firmly grasping his knees, as he gazed fixedly at his daughter. She was very pale, very thin, a small, delicate, weakly creature, but her eyes were brighter, and her face happier than he had seen them since she was a little untroubled child, not old enough to understand his difficulties and toil. The tears started to her eyes for a moment as she met his gaze, but she laughed and nodded to him | as she wiped them away. If God meant to leave him Victoria he would not fret about her coffin. His sleep was disturbed that night, but the waking thoughts that drove it away were happy ones. Had he thought himself an old worn-out man a few hours before? Why, there were years of work in him yet, and he would start afresh after to-morrow. If he could only lay by two-pence a day-one shilling a week-for the next two years, that would more than return his lost, treasure. But it should never lie under Victoria's pillow again to sing that dismal song into her ear. He must find a banker for it; and it should grow without her knowledge. Then his heart softened towards Roger, poor lad! What could he do with such a father? One of his own boys had died about his age; and he thought with peaceful regret of him, blending the two lads together in his half-waking, half-dreamy thoughts. Bess had to start off for the market alone the next morning, leaving Euclid to go to the police-court to appear against Roger. He and Victoria set out in good time, and had to wait a long while in the large entrancecourt of it, whilst a squalid and rough crowd of men, women, and children gathered together. Victoria, in her long seclusion in her garret, had been kept very much apart from her neighbours, and the brutal faces frightened her. She was glad when an officer summoned her and her father into the court. They had been there before, yet still the place looked vast and imposing to them, though it was but a small and dimly lighted hall. There were about fifty spectators in it, standing in a small space at the back, looking on and listening in almost unbroken silence. Roger stood at the bar, opposite the magistrate, looking miserable and bewildered. Blackett, dressed decently like a thoroughly respectable workman, glanced towards him from time to time with a glance that made him shiver. Euclid and Victoria gave their evidence again; and the policeman who had arrested Roger told what he had said in admission of the theft. There was no doubt of his guilt, but was his father an accomplice? There might be a strong suspicion of it in every mind, but there was no proof. Blackett told the magistrate that Roger was a confirmed liar, as well as a confirmed thief. He had often beaten him for his bad conduct, and done his utmost to correct him. He himself had been so hard up for money on the day of the robbery that he had been compelled to go out and seek work through the country. Not a shilling or a penny could be traced to him; and if the lad swore he had given it all to him it was only one out of a thousand lies. He would be glad to have him sent to prison, where he would be taken care of and taught a trade. "I've got somethin' more to say," exclaimed Euclid, stepping briskly into the witness box as soon as Blackett quitted it. He stood in it as if it had been a kind of pulpit, and he a rugged, unkempt, grim old preacher. His ragged gray hair fell over his wrinkled forehead almost to the shaggy eyebrows, under which his dim and faded eyes gleamed again, for a few minutes, with his earnestness and resolution. He grasped the woodwork before him with both his hands, and turned his gaze alternately from the magistrate to Roger. "Don't you send him to gaol, my worship," he exclaimed in a tone of fervent entreaty. "I forgive him free, and Victoria forgives him. It were the money for her coffin he stole; and it's come to her mind as God doesn't mean to let her die yet. I was afear'd the parish 'ud have to bury her. The parish!" he cried in a shriller voice, which rang through the court. afear'd of that, or I'd never ha' gone for the police, never! He's only a young, little lad, "I was |