and he's no more than a young lamb as doesn't know the right way. What are we to do to set him right again, so as he shouldn't perish? If it's God's will, it must be done, I reckon.” "Where should Davy go but here?" asked Mrs. Linnett in a hearty, cheery voice, which made the downcast heart of poor Bess leap for joy. "If you and he 'ud sleep together in my bed, Bess shall have the closet, and I'll sleep with Victoria. We shall shake down somehow. And Captain Upjohn, my old shipmate, says he'll take him with him to Sweden, and they'll be away six weeks or more, and his hair 'ill be grown, and he'll look all right when he gets back. Maybe he'll take to a seafaring life, and then he'll get on well, I know." Oh, if mother only knew!" cried Bess. The day before David's release from gaol was a great day in Mrs. Linnett's little house. Bess scrubbed every floor, and rubbed every article of furniture, as if they could not be bright enough to give David a welcome. All the while she was thinking of the many things she would have to tell him; of Roger's theft, and Blackett's hatred, and of Mr. Dudley and Mrs. Linnett, and this new happy home in which she found herself. Mrs. Linnett, who dearly loved a little festival, was making wonderful preparations for a dinner far beyond a common meal to-morrow; and Victoria was helping her to wash currants and stone raisins for a pudding. None of them spoke much of the coming event, though their hearts were full of it; for lying beneath the gladness there ran a strong under-current of grief for the past, and of vague dread of the future. I wish Jesus Christ was only here now!" cried Bess, flinging her arms round Mrs. Linnett's neck and sobbing on her shoulder. "I'd go and tell Him every word about Davy, and ask Him if He thought Him bad enough to be sent to gaol. If He was livin' anywhere in London, I'd crawl to Him on my hands and knees if I couldn't walk, and tell Him all about it." "He knows all about it, Bess," answered Mrs. Linnett, "and He'll make it up to him in some way. Only I wonder, I do wonder as Christian folks can let it be! If the Queen 'ud only think about it, or the grand Lords and the Commons, as the newspapers speak about, they'd never let it be, I know. They'd find some other way to punish children. But we'll try and make Davy forget it when he comes home." for the discharge of prisoners, and it was settled that Euclid and Bess should be waiting for him when the outer door of the gaol was opened. Bess was awake long before it was time to get up in the morning. It was an April day, six full calendar months since David had left home in the autumn to go begging for his mother. Euclid had time to make his early round, and sell his cresses for the working-men's breakfasts; and he had resolved to make the rest of the day a holiday. Bess met him as he had just finished his sales, and then they turned their steps in the direction of the City prison. They were both happier and gayer than they had been since David went away, but Bess was especially glad. For, after all, in spite of the sorrow which cast so deep a shadow over her life, still David was coming back to her, and he was her own. He belonged to her, and she belonged to him. And Davy had always been so good to her. They reached the prison a few minutes before the appointed hour, and paced up and down under its gloomy walls, blackened with dust and smoke, and towering high above the bent old man and half-grown girl who trode half-timidly under their shadow. The heavy gates were shut close, and no sound was to be heard beyond them. The porter's closely-barred window and thick door seemed to forbid them to knock there and make any inquiry. But they had none to make. They continued to pace to and fro patiently, with the meek and quiet patience of most of the honest and decent poor, not expecting any notice to be taken of them, or wishing to give any trouble. To and fro, to and fro, until the nearest church clock and the gaol clock within the walls struck an hour behind the time, and still the prisoners were not set free. Again the weary footsteps trod beneath the gloomy shadows, and both Euclid and Bess fell into an almost unbroken and anxious silence. How was it that David was still kept in prison? At length the door of the porter's lodge was opened, and a warder came out, having it instantly and jealously closed after him. Old Euclid summoned courage enough to address him. "Sir," he said respectfully, "is there anything gone wrong inside the gaol?" Why do you want to know?" inquired the warder, with a sharp glance at them both; "what are you hanging about here for?" "We are waitin' for this lassie's brotherDavid Fell," he answered, whilst Bess gazed Mr. Dudley had found out the usual hour up eagerly yet timidly into the warder's face; "his time's up to-day, and we've been looking out for him to take him home with us.” Why, the prisoners have been gone this two hours," replied the warder. "We let them out an hour earlier than usual, for we've some great visitors coming to see the gaol, and we wanted to get on with business. They didn't make any objections, not one of 'em, I can tell you. You make haste home, and you'll find him there.” But Euclid and Bess knew that they could not find David at Mrs. Linnett's, and they retraced their homeward path sadly and heavily. If he had thought of going to any home, it must be to that old, unhappy place, where his mother had died the day after his second conviction, and thither neither Euclid nor Bess dared go, for fear of Blackett. It was six weeks since they had secretly quitted it, and not a soul among their old neighbours knew where they had found a new roof to shelter them. They had trusted no one with that precious secret. Yet Bess could not bear the thought of losing David. They must not lose him. Alas! they guessed too well where he must be. But how could they get to him, and let him know what friends and what a home were waiting to welcome him ? his mother's good name, and seeking the restoration of her property, his whole boyish nature rose rebelliously under a sense of cruel injustice. He would do it again, he cried within himself-yes, if all the magistrates and policemen in the whole world were looking on. Why should his mother be cheated out of the only treasure she possessed? and how could he stand by, and hear her called what Mr. Quirk had called her? His mother was as good as any woman in London, and he was ready to fight anybody who gave her an ill name. He was but a boy still. In many homes he would have been reckoned among the children, and his faults of temper would have been passed over, or leniently dealt with. He was in gaol for a brave, rash action, which most men would have applauded in their own sons. Each time the trial that consigned him to an imprisonment of three months had not occupied more than five minutes. Police courts are busy places, with a constant pressure of affairs to be dispatched, and a police magistrate has not time to investigate the statements of boys who, nine times out of ten, are telling a lie in order to escape punishment. David had been caught redhanded in his transgression of the law; and the law, framed as it had been against wrongdoers, swept him in its resistless current into gaol. The feast was ready by the time they reached home, but none of them had a heart for it. Mrs. Linnett, however, took a cheerful | view of the misfortune, and assured them The prison was not the one from which Mr. Dudley would know how to find David he had just been released, but there was without bringing any danger to Euclid. Mr. a mournful sameness to it. He did not Dudley looked in during the evening, and feel like a stranger there. He had had one upon hearing the news started off at once in night free-a night and a day with his dying search of David. He was almost as anxious mother; and now three more months stretched to find the lad and take him home, as Bess before him. But this time he was sullen and herself could have been. moody, brooding over his injuries. There was no longer the hope to sustain him of learning a trade, by which he could maintain his mother and Bess. He felt sure his mother would be dead before this second term was over, and it would be best for little Bess to have nothing to do with a brother who had been twice in gaol. David had been at the old house-that was quickly and easily learned. He had knocked at two doors, and been driven away from them both as a thief and a gaol-bird. But nobody could tell where he had gone to. At last Mr. Dudley made an inquiry at Blackett's own door; but all he could learn was that Blackett himself had left his old lodgings for good that very day, and had taken care not to leave his address. CHAPTER XVI.-TWICE IN GAOL. FOR the second time, or, as the prison report registered it, for the third time, David Fell had been committed to gaol for three months. David knew the prison report was wrong. More than this, he did not feel that his first offence had deserved so severe a penalty. Now, when he had been defending David became insolent and refractory. What did it matter if they put him into the black hole, where no single ray of light could enter? The darkness could not affright him; or if it did, he would harden himself against it, as he hardened himself against every punishment or expostulation. He was honest and truthful-yet he was branded a thief and a liar. He was intensely ignorant-yet he was punished for actions which would have been applauded in a gentleman's son. could not put his wretchedness into words; He you might as well ask of him to paint on canvas a picture of his prison cell. His tongue was dumb, but his memory and the passion of his heart were never silent. They were for ever muttering to him in undertones of revenge, and hatred, and defiance. David completed his fourteenth year in gaol. The heavy-browed, sullen-faced boy, who was discharged from his second imprisonment in April, could hardly have been recognised as the lad who had gone out, ashamed though resolute, to beg for help the preceding October. He slouched along the sunny streets, under the blue sky, bright with glistening spring clouds, but he paid no heed to sunshine or cloud. In old times there had been the changes of the seasons even for him and little Bess, in their squalid street, but they had no more power over his sullen | moods. He sauntered on, not homewards -he knew too well there could be no home for him-but towards the old familiar place, the only spot he knew well on earth, where, at least, he would find faces not altogether strange to him, if they were not the faces of friends, and where alone he could learn any tidings of Bess. But he did not hurry. There was no mother now to be hungry for a sight of him. Still, when he reached the house he went straight to the old door and knocked. A stranger opened it, and looked suspiciously at him. There was no Mrs. Fell there; she had never heard of such a person. She had only come into the house three weeks ago, and she was too busy getting her own living to go gossiping among the neighbours. She slammed the door to in his face, and he heard her draw the bolt on the inside. He had not caught even a glimpse of the poor, dark room, which had once been his home. "I'll go up-stairs and ask Victoria," said David to himself. He mounted the stairs slowly and quietly, not with the buoyant step of an active and restless lad, but with the hesitating, listless tread of a culprit. He was ashamed of facing either Euclid or Victoria, and he was almost afraid that their door would be shut in his face. But when he reached the foot of the last staircase, leading only to their garret, he saw the door open, and he mounted more quickly. Yes, the door was open, propped open with a brick, to prevent it from banging to and fro on its hinges. But the garret was quite empty. There was no trace left of its former tenants, except the pictures which Victoria had pasted over the fireplace. All | was gone: the broken chair, the corner It is possible that he fell asleep for very sorrow; but after a long while, as the dusk of evening was creeping on, he roused himself and slowly descended the stairs. On the second floor he tapped with a trembling hand on a closed door, and quietly lifted the latch. He knew the workman who lived there with his wife and children. They were sitting at supper; and the man, calling out "Who's there?" looked up as David put his pale face round the door. "I'm looking for my mother!" he said in a faltering voice. "Your mother!" repeated the man, rising angrily; "I know what you want, you gaolbird. Get out o' this at once, you skulking thief! But David did not wait for him to reach the door. He closed it hastily, and ran down-stairs to escape if he was pursued. As he was passing into the street he heard his name called through Blackett's open door. He stopped instantaneously, catching at a straw of hope. Perhaps Roger could tell him what had become of Bess. "Come in, David Fell," called the voice of Blackett himself, "come in; now you're tarred with the same stick as my lads, you You needn't stand off from me no more. and me 'ill be as thick as thieves now. Come in, my lad," he added in as kindly a tone as he could assume. "I'm right sorry for thee, and I've news for thee." For a moment David hesitated, remembering his mother's dread of her neighbour; but Blackett came to the door and dragged him in, in no way roughly. "You've come to look after your poor mother?" he said gravely. David nodded. "She's dead-died the very night after you was booked for another three months," said Blackett. David did not speak. No change passed over his hard and sullen face. He had known it all the while, in the dreary solitude of his prison-cell; he would never see his mother's face again-never! Yet as he stood there, opposite to Blackett, he felt as if he could see her lying in the room beyond, on the sacking of her comfortless bed, with her white face and hungry eyes turned towards the door, watching for him to come in. "And Bess is gone away, nobody knows where," continued Blackett, eyeing the boy with a keen, sinister gaze-" on the streets somewhere. There's not much chance for Bess, neither." David flinched and shivered. Should he ever see little Bess again? Never again, as he had been used to see her. He could recollect all his life through having her given into his care and keeping, a younger, smaller, feebler creature dependent upon him. He had played with her, and fought for her; they had eaten and been hungry together, and had had every event of their lives in common, until he was sent to gaol. Was little Bess likely to be sent to gaol too? Girls as young as Bess were sent to prison, and the chances were all against her keeping out of it. Queen Victoria and my Lord Euclid are gone," went on Blackett, with a sneer; "they made a moonlight flit of it, and they hadn't the manners to leave their address behind 'em. They carried all their fortune with them." Still David did not speak, but stood looking into Blackett's face with a forlorn and listless strangeness, which touched even him with its utter loss of hope. "Come, come, my lad, never say die!" he exclaimed. "Take a drop out o' my glass here, and pluck up your spirits. Take a good pull at it, David. You haven't asked after Roger? He's in better luck than you. He cribbed a parcel of money from under Victoria's pillow, and my Lord Euclid had him took up for it. I was always in hopes of gettin' him off my hands, the poor hangdog! But he had grand luck. Old Euclid sets to and pleads for him to the justice, and they found out as it was a sin and a shame to send a lad like him to gaol, a lad o' fourteen! And they've sent him to school! To school, David, where he's quite the gentle pause. "I've paid it six weeks, and now I'm giving 'em the slip. I'm a-going to cross the river into Surrey to-night, and if you'll come along with me, I'll say you are my son, and I'll pay your lodgin' to-night; an old neighbour's son shan't sleep in the streets. Come, David! You haven't got another friend in this place, and I don't ask you to be a thief. You shall get your livin' quite honest, if you can. You're not a lazy hound like Roger, or I'd have nought to say to you. But you'll always be worth your bread and cheese, if you can get work. Come, and we'll get supper at the tavern afore we start." "I'll come," said David. " said David. At the word supper he felt how hungry he was; and he remembered that he was penniless. Blackett had already disposed of his few possessions to the tenant who had taken his room; so there was nothing now to be done but to pick up his bundle of clothes, and his glazier's tools, and, as it was already night, to take his departure across the river, where he was as yet unknown by sight to the police. David Fell followed him as his only friend. CHAPTER XVII.-MEETING AND PARTING. But BLACKETT was as good as his word. He did not in any way interfere with David's efforts to obtain work by which he could live honestly. He counted surely upon what the result would be; and when he saw David start off morning after morning on his fruitless search, he would thrust his tongue into his cheek, and chuckle scornfully, causing the lad's heavy heart to sink yet lower. no one else was kind to him; and though he had a lurking dread and distrust of Blackett, there was no one else to give him a morsel of food. Blackett gave him both food and shelter, and of an evening he took him with him to the haunts of men like himself, and amongst them David perfected the lessons he had begun to learn in gaol. He And The brave spirit of the boy was broken; his powers of endurance were gone. could no longer bear the gnawings of hunger and the cravings of thirst, as he had done so long as he could hold up his head before any one of his fellow-men. He felt compelled to slink away from the eye of a policeman, fancying that all the force knew him. he had indeed the indelible brand of the prison-house upon him he had a sullen, hang - dog expression, a skulking, cowardly gait, an alarmed eye and restless glance, looking out for objects of dread. When he was hungry-and how often that was !—he no longer hesitated to snatch a slice of fish or a bunch of carrots from a street-stall, if he had a good chance of escape. To march whistling along the streets, with his head well up and his step free, was a thing altogether of the past now. He made no effort to find Bess. If there had been any faint, forlorn hope in his heart, when he left gaol, of still doing something better than drifting back into it, it had died away entirely before he had been a fortnight with Blackett. The courage he had once had was transformed into a reckless defiance of the laws and the society that had dealt so cruelly with him. What did he owe to society? Why should he keep its laws? He soon learned to say that his consent had not been asked when they were made, and why should he be bound by them? A rich man's son had all his heart could desire, and might break many of the laws of the land, because he could afford to pay a fine for it; whilst he, David Fell, left by society to live in degradation and forced idleness, was hurried off to prison for innocent offences such as his had been. A strong sense of injury and injustice smouldered in his boyish heart. Summer came and went, and a second winter dragged down the poor again to their yearly depths of suffering and privation. David was in gaol once more, this time for theft, at which he laughed. Prison was a comfortable shelter from the cold and hunger of the dreary mid-winter; and if he had only luck enough to keep out of it in the summer, it was not bad for winter quarters. He learned more lessons in shoemaking, by which he could not get an honest living outside the gaol walls among honest folk. The time for that was past. He did not try to find work when he was free again. Henceforth the work David's hands would find to do was what God's law as well as man's law, Christ as well as the world, call crime. But whose fault was it? Nearly a year and a half had passed since Euclid and Victoria and Bess had found a home with Mrs. Linnett, and though Mr. Dudley had done all in his power to discover David, every effort had failed. One July evening Bess was crossing London Bridge. The light from the setting sun shone upon the river, which was rippling in calm, quiet lines, with the peaceful flowing in of the tide. Bess stood still for a few minutes, gazing westward to the golden sky. She was a prettier girl than even her own mother had thought sadly of her becoming. But this evening her face was brighter than usual; | her eyes sparkled, and her lips half parted with a smile, as her thoughts dwelt on some pleasant subject, apart from the beauty of the sunset. She took no notice of the loungers on each side of her, who, like herself, were leaning over the parapet of the bridge and gazing down on the river. But as she roused herself from her pleasant girlish. reverie and turned away to go on homewards, a hand was laid on her arm, and a voice beside her said in a low tone, "Bess!" She started in a tremor of hope and gladness. It was David's voice; his, whom she had sought for in vain ever since she had lost him! But as she looked at him, with her parted lips and shining eyes, a change crept over her face. Could this scampish, vile, and ill-looking lad be David? Yet as she gazed at him a change passed over his face also. His hard, sullen mouth softened, and behind the reddened and bleared eyes there dawned something of the old tender light of the love he had borne for her when she was his little Bess. "Davy!" she cried. "Ay!" he said. Then there was a silence. What could they say to one another? There seemed a great gulf between them. They stood side by side; the one simple, and innocent, and good, the other foul, and vicious, and guilty. How far apart they felt themselves to be! "Davy," said Bess at last, though falteringly, "you must come home with me." "No," he answered sorrowfully, "I'll never spoil your life, little Bess. You're all right, I see; you've not gone wrong, and I'll never come across you. I'm very glad I've seen you once again, but I didn't try. Bess, I'd ha' been very proud of you if things had happened different." "Where do you live now?" asked Bess, letting her hand fall upon his greasy sleeve for a moment, but as quickly removing it with a girlish disgust. "I live off and on with Blackett," he answered. "I've got no other friend in the world; and sometimes he's good enough, and sometimes he's 'ragious. Bess," and he lowered his voice again to a whisper, "I were in gaol again last winter!" "Oh, Davy! Davy!" she moaned. |