The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, SIR?"

(See page [10].)]

THE
STRAND MAGAZINE
An Illustrated Monthly

EDITED BY
GEORGE NEWNES

Vol. XVII.

JANUARY TO JUNE

London:
GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, AND EXETER STREET, STRAND

1899

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[Round the Fire.]
[Illustrated Interviews.]
[His Home Coming]
[In Nature's Workshop.]
[Weepin' Willie]
[Animal Friendship.]
[Miss Cayley's Adventures.]
[Unique Log-Marks.]
[A Wedding Tour in a Balloon]
[A Peep into "Punch."]
[The Spider of Guyana]
[The Training Ship "Exmouth."]
[False Colours]
[Animal Actualities.]
[The Cotton-wool Princess.]
[A Funeral at Sea.]
[Curiosities.]
[Transcriber's Notes.]

The Strand Magazine.

Vol. xvii. JANUARY, 1899. No. 97.

[Round the Fire.][1]

By A. Conan Doyle.

VIII.—THE STORY OF THE JAPANNED BOX.

It was a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely to have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place, for I gained—well, as I tell you the story you will learn what I gained.

I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born right in the middle of it. It is a land of rolling pastures, rising in higher folds to the westward, until they swell into the Malvern Hills. There are no towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and everything is stone—stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the heart of a great nation.

[1] Copyright, 1899, by George Newnes, Limited.

It was in the middle of this country, not very far from Evesham, that Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was a widower—his wife had died three years before—and he had been left with these two lads aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But, there—I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe Place!

It was a very, very old house, incredibly old—pre-Norman, some of, it—and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation since long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when first I came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude crumbling stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright and the garden was well kept. No house could be dismal which had a pretty girl inside it and such a show of roses in front.

Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only four of us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time four-and-twenty and as pretty—well, as pretty as Mrs. Colmore is now—myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall, military-looking man, who acted as steward to the Bollamore estates. We four always had our meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library. Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he did not.

For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six foot three inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed Mephistophelian beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study, but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of his age—five-and-fifty perhaps—as any woman would wish to look upon.

SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE.

But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous, always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I have never lived so long with any man and known so little of him. If he were indoors he spent his time either in his own small study in the Eastern Tower, or in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that one could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in the day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about ten at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For the rest of the day he would be in his library—save that for an hour or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that.

It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the housekeeper, and Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to talk easily of their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than I did, and our common interest was one of the causes which drew us together. At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of the man whom I served.

The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with imminent danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in order to save him. Dripping and exhausted—for I was far more spent than the child—I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child was in no danger, while he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which expressed in its intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which he tried to conceal.

"One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he, turning back through the open door.

And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room, conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window, and the simplest of furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a small shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a full-length photograph of a woman—I took no particular notice of the features, but I remember that a certain gracious gentleness was the prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black japanned box and one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic bands.

"OUR INTERVIEW WAS A SHORT ONE."

Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived that I was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led, however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never penetrated into the chamber which chance had opened to me. That very afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn beside us.

"You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favour," said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's visits to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways."

"Why do you say relapsed?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise.

"Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous history is unknown to you?"

"Absolutely."

"You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come to your ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took it for granted that you knew that you were in the service of 'Devil' Bollamore."

"But why 'Devil'?" I asked.

"Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the name of 'Devil' Bollamore was one of the best known in London. He was the leader of the fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard—a survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them."

I stared at him in amazement.

"What!" I cried, "that quiet, studious, sad-faced man?"

"The greatest rip and debauchee in England! All between ourselves, Colmore. But you understand now what I mean when I say that a woman's voice in his room might even now give rise to suspicions."

"But what can have changed him so?"

"Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a drunkard. He had become a slave to it—hopeless and helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him, though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house. There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger even now."

"Then her influence still holds him?"

"That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we all expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways. She feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose. By the way, did you see a black japanned box in his room?"

"Yes."

"I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to be away, if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black japanned box with him. Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told you rather more than I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest should come to your knowledge." I could see that the worthy man was consumed with curiosity and just a little piqued that I, the new-comer, should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found myself upon more confidential terms with him.

And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object of greater interest to me. I began to understand that strangely human look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his careworn face. He was a man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm's length, from morning till night, a horrible adversary, who was for ever trying to close with him—an adversary which would destroy him body and soul could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim, round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden, this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.

In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his library (it was one of the best private libraries in England), and I spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society, he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window reducing to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these closer relations I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the turret.

And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still remained all that he had ever been, with the additional vice of hypocrisy. What happened was as follows.

One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the neighbouring village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the light was lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the window, which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were, as it happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment, and we had paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly something broke in upon our talk and turned our thoughts away from our own affairs.

It was a voice—the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low—so low that it was only in that still night air that we could have heard it, but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timbre. It spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent—a piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I stood for an instant staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in the direction of the hall-door.

"It came through the window," I said.

"We must not play the part of eaves-droppers," she answered. "We must forget that we have ever heard it."

There was an absence of surprise in her manner which suggested a new idea to me.

"You have heard it before," I cried.

"I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same turret. It has happened frequently."

"Who can the woman be?"

"I have no idea. I had rather not discuss it."

"IT WAS THE VOICE UNDOUBTEDLY OF A WOMAN."

Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting that our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be, this mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not live there. But in that case where did she come from? It could not be any one of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs. Stevens. The visitor must come from without. But how?

And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was, and how probable that some mediæval passage existed in it. There is hardly an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the basement of the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort it would open through the floor. There were numerous cottages in the immediate vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might lie among some tangle of bramble in the neighbouring copse. I said nothing to anyone, but I felt that the secret of my employer lay within my power.

And the more convinced I was of this the more I marvelled at the manner in which he concealed his true nature. Often as I watched his austere figure, I asked myself if it were indeed possible that such a man should be living this double life, and I tried to persuade myself that my suspicions might after all prove to be ill-founded. But there was the female voice, there was the secret nightly rendezvous in the turret chamber—how could such facts admit of an innocent interpretation? I conceived a horror of the man. I was filled with loathing at his deep, consistent hypocrisy.

Only once during all those months did I ever see him without that sad but impassive mask which he usually presented towards his fellow-man. For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic fires which he had damped down so long. The occasion was an unworthy one, for the object of his wrath was none other than the aged charwoman whom I have already mentioned as being the one person who was allowed within his mysterious chamber. I was passing the corridor which led to the turret—for my own room lay in that direction—when I heard a sudden, startled scream, and merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who is inarticulate with passion. It was the snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I heard his voice thrilling with anger. "You would dare!" he cried. "You would dare to disobey my directions!" An instant later the charwoman passed me, flying down the passage, white faced and tremulous, while the terrible voice thundered behind her. "Go to Mrs. Stevens for your money! Never set foot in Thorpe Place again!" Consumed with curiosity, I could not help following the woman, and found her round the corner leaning against the wall and palpitating like a frightened rabbit.

"NEVER SET FOOT IN THORPE PLACE AGAIN!"

"What is the matter, Mrs. Brown?" I asked.

"It's master!" she gasped. "Oh 'ow 'e frightened me! If you 'ad seen 'is eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir. I thought 'e would 'ave been the death of me."

"But what had you done?"

"Done, sir! Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of. Just laid my 'and on that black box of 'is—'adn't even opened it, when in 'e came and you 'eard the way 'e went on. I've lost my place, and glad I am of it, for I would never trust myself within reach of 'im again."

So it was the japanned box which was the cause of this outburst—the box from which he would never permit himself to be separated. What was the connection, or was there any connection between this and the secret visits of the lady whose voice I had overheard? Sir John Bollamore's wrath was enduring as well as fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the charwoman, vanished from our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more.

And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all these strange questions and put my employer's secret in my possession. The story may leave you with some lingering doubt as to whether my curiosity did not get the better of my honour, and whether I did not condescend to play the spy. If you choose to think so I cannot help it, but can only assure you that, improbable as it may appear, the matter came about exactly as I describe it.

The first stage in this dénouement was that the small room on the turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age, it snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a quantity of the plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the room at the time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the débris and brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never had an opportunity of searching for that secret passage, the existence of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would have brought her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr. Richards asking Mrs. Stevens who the woman was whom he had overheard talking to Sir John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I saw from her manner that it was not the first time that she had had to answer or avoid the same question.

"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.

I confessed that I had.

"And what do you think of it?"

I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine.

"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or not?"

"It is certainly a woman."

"Which room did you hear it from?"

"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."

"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the door as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman——"

"Why, what else could it be?"

He looked at me hard.

"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it is a woman, how does she get there?"

"I don't know."

"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing—but there, for a practical business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is rather a ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I saw that he felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may by this time have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to me, it never reached the others.

And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night from neuralgia, and about mid-day I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was finishing the indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was my custom to work there from five till seven. On this particular day I struggled against the double effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already mentioned that there was a recess in the library, and in this it was my habit to work. I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and, falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep.

"SIR JOHN BOLLAMORE WAS SITTING AT HIS STUDY TABLE."

How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke. Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with books loomed darkly all round me. A dim radiance from the moonlight came through the farther window, and against this lighter background I saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I never realized—it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain that I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to be alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the voice.

Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious far-away tinkle, but every word was clear, though faint—very faint, for they were the last words of a dying woman.

"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I am here at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh, John, be strong, be strong, until we meet again."

I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I could not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying, half sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning distant musical words. And he—he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room, switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless charwoman may have seen him weeks before.

"Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of this, sir?"

With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over his features.

"My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only myself to blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are worse than no confidences, and so you may know all since you know so much. The story may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely upon your sense of honour that no human soul shall hear it from your lips. I am proud still—God help me!—or, at least, I am proud enough to resent that pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled at envy, and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate.

"You have heard the source from which the voice comes—that voice which has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am aware of the rumours to which it has given rise. These speculations, whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that, Mr. Colmore, I acquit you.

"When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with a purse which brought only too many false friends and false advisers to my side. I drank deeply of the wine of life—if there is a man living who has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered, my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a necessity to me, I was a creature from whom my memory recoils. And it was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me, and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded itself to the level of the beasts.

"But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes. In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of her own sufferings and her own death, that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang which her fate brought to her was the fear that when her influence was removed I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that I made oath to her that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She knew only too well the hold that the devil had upon me—she who had striven so to loosen it—and it haunted her night and day the thought that my soul might again be within his grip.

"It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of this invention—this phonograph—and with the quick insight of a loving woman she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London to procure the best which money could buy. When I returned she lay actually in the throes of death. And with her last breath—the very last that she breathed upon earth—she whispered this message into it, a message to strengthen my resolves and to retain her influence upon my actions. Into her ear I whispered that twice a day for ever afterwards I should listen to her dear voice, and so, smiling at the success of her plan, she passed gently away.

"So now you have my secret, Mr. Colmore, and you understand why this japanned box and that which it contains is more to me than all my ancestral home. I trust you, and I believe you to be worthy of my trust. But after this the sight of you would be painful to me, and so good-bye! You will find no cause to regret having left my service, but you will understand that we must never meet again."

So this was the last time that I was ever destined to see Sir John Bollamore, and I left him standing in his library, with his hand upon the instrument which brought him that ever-recurring, intangible, and yet intimate reminder from the woman whom he loved. You may have read about his death in a carriage accident last Midsummer. I do not fancy that it was a very unwelcome event to him.

[Illustrated Interviews.]

LXII.—MADAME MELBA.

By Percy Cross Standing.

MADAME MELBA AS SHE FIRST APPEARED IN GRAND OPERA.—GILDA IN "RIGOLETTO," BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 15, 1887.

From a Photo. by J. Ganz, Brussels.

To an observant student of the world's genius it is a reflection, not without a peculiar interest of its own, that the Australian Continent has so far produced but one woman-singer of the first rank. Of poets whose genius is as undoubted as their place in the world's literature is certain Australia has given us at least two, in Henry Kendall and the gifted but ill-fated Adam Lindsay Gordon. To the drama this, the "least contiguous" of the four continents, has contributed Haddon Chambers—though the creator of "Captain Swift" and "The Idler" has now dwelt among us so long as to be regarded as a fully naturalized "Englander." The department of imaginative literature is already represented by quite a little army from "down under," as the eminent names of Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," Mr. Rolf Boldrewood, Miss Ada Cambridge, Miss Ethel Turner, Mr. Guy Boothby, and the late Marcus Clarke bear eloquent testimony; whilst the field of critical and biographical writing finds a worthy representative in Mr. Patchett Martin.

But Melba stands alone. Towering head and shoulders over every other aspirant to the highest honours of grand opera, the retirement of Madame Patti from the operatic field has left "the Australian Nightingale" undisputed ruler of an empire probably the proudest in the sum of this planet's most desirable possessions. Yet these are honours becomingly and graciously worn by one who, scarcely a decade ago, was little more than a name to the patrons and supporters of the opera.

As I sit in her salon to-day, and chat with this queenly woman, whose greatest charm assuredly lies in her consideration for others, I wonder whether she ever recalls that little white-robed girl (herself) who, in far-off Melbourne, in the dead of night, startled her parents and brought them downstairs by her playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." It is a pretty story, with a prettier sequel. For the parents of that little girl had not the heart to chide their offspring for her "precocity" (that unmeaning word in which the beginnings of genius are so often concealed), but rather did they coax her back to bed as they marvelled over what they had heard. Surely they must, at that early day, have had some faint glimmering of the future in store for the coming prima donna!

MADAME MELBA BEFORE HER DÉBUT, 1887. From a Photo. by Chalot, Paris.

"Perhaps they did—I do not know," says Madame Melba, dreamily. "But one thing I know for certain—that their daughter did not cherish any such aspirations for a long time to come. I went quietly on with my education—no, not my musical education, that came later—until my marriage, which took place at the early age of seventeen. Stop, though! I was entirely forgetting to tell you the story of what I call 'my first appearance on any stage.' It took place at the Town Hall, Richmond, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and I was aged six at the time! What did I sing? Let me see, now! Yes, I sang 'Shells of the Ocean' first, followed by 'Comin' thro' the Rye.' It was a great occasion, as you may imagine, and I am by no means certain that I am not prouder of it than of anything I have done since."

On the question as to whence—if traceable at all—Madame Melba derives her voice and natural musical gifts, she told me that her mother was an accomplished musician. In addition to being a beautiful pianist, she played also the organ and the harp. Thus it was that the future prima donna was reared so to speak in the lap of Music. Her mother was her first teacher of the piano, and afterwards her studies were aided by the exertions of her aunts Alice and Lizzie.

"Even as a child of three or four," she continued, "I was so passionately devoted to music that I remember frequently crawling under the piano and remaining quiet there for hours while listening to my mother's playing. Yes, my mother sang also, though she had not a particularly notable voice. But her sister, my 'Aunt Lizzie,' as I called her, possessed a soprano voice of extraordinary beauty and quality. To this day I can remember my aunt's absolute control of her voice, and the beauty and ease of her execution even in the highest pianissimo passages. Indeed, I feel sure my Aunt Lizzie would have enjoyed a brilliant career as a public singer, had she adopted it."

It should be mentioned that the diva's father, Mr. David Mitchell, is a squatter resident in the Colony of Victoria, and that his several stations are far removed from important townships. The family now reside at Colbin Abbin Estate; but in the days when Melba was a child they lived at "Steel's Flat," another of her father's estates, where she was born and brought up, with intermittent visits to Melbourne.

I was interested to find that the subject of this interview can also trace the gift of music on the paternal side of the house. To this day her father sings in the local choir, and his daughter told me she well remembered his voice as a deep basso of beautiful timbre. He has always been passionately fond of music, and is, in addition to his vocal talent (to quote his daughter's own expression), "a fiddler of no mean ability." Madame Melba speaks in the most affectionate terms of both her parents. Her mother died while the great singer was in her teens, but Melba cherishes many sweet recollections of her.

"She was a natural artist—not as regards music only, for one remembers it in the general expression of her life. She was, among other things, a charming painter on china, and the dessert-service still in use at home was decorated by her brush.

"Did my father also foster my love of music? Yes, indeed he did, to the utmost of his power. When I was quite a baby it was my great joy, on Sunday afternoons, to sit on my father's knee at the harmonium. He would blow the bellows with his feet, while singing a bass accompaniment to the hymn which I would pick out on the key-board with one finger."

Thus, finding that the Australian singer inherits the gift of song from either side of her family, I inquired whether this passion for music did not begin to take shape at a very tender age.

"In illustration that that was so," she answered, "I remember once our family moving into 'winter quarters' at one of my father's outlying stations. I was ten years old at the time, but I know I felt furious, on arrival, to find that there was no piano in the house. My gentle mother consoled me with the gift of a concertina, which I taught myself to play during the three months that we remained there! In those sequestered places, in the case of country houses very far removed from a church or chapel, it is customary for a clergyman or lay preacher to come along on Sundays and preach to the family, the servants, and station hands—often quite a large congregation, particularly at shearing-time.

"One Sunday—I was then, perhaps, thirteen years old—we were visited by a worthy man, who chanced to be a particularly poor preacher. At the conclusion of his very long and (as we children thought) somewhat wearisome discourse, he suggested that we should sing a hymn. There was a harmonium in the room, and my mother asked me to play a familiar hymn. I accordingly seated myself, but, in revenge for having been so bored, I played—to the horror of some and the secret delight of others—a music-hall ditty which had succeeded in penetrating our wilderness! It was called, 'You Should See Me Dance the Polka.' In the sequel, I received the well-merited punishment of being sent to bed for the remainder of the day.

"It must have been about the end of the same year that I had, what I thought at the time, a very fearsome adventure indeed! It happened at Melbourne. I was learning to play the organ, and I had permission occasionally to practise on the great organ in the Scots Church. Late one afternoon I ceased playing, and fell into a reverie. When, at last, I proceeded to leave the church, I found, to my horror, I was locked in! My playing having ceased for some time, the sexton had concluded I was gone, and had locked up the church and left. You cannot conceive the agony of mind I endured. The church was very dark, and the pulpit and altar in their grey dust-cloths looked, to my frightened imagination, like monstrous ghosts. What should I do?... At last the sexton returned—by the merest chance he had forgotten something, which he came back to fetch, and so I obtained my release."

About two years after her marriage, namely, at the age of nineteen, Melba began concert singing. At first she sang as an amateur; but so rapidly did she betray talents of an extraordinarily high order, that she was strongly recommended to adopt the vocal art as a profession. Upon this advice she acted, and came to England to study. The rest is history.

It is, however, history of an exceedingly interesting character. It will be seen that, in shaping her public career, Madame Melba unconsciously moved in cycles of two years. Thus, she was married at seventeen. At nineteen she commenced to sing publicly. At twenty-one she came to Europe in order to study the art she had elected to follow. At twenty-three occurred her début on the operatic stage.

So far as operatic England is concerned, the distinction of introducing Melba to the Covent Garden public belongs to the late Sir Augustus Harris, who subsequently wrote a rather remarkable letter on the subject of the Australian débutante's quickly won popularity. Madame Melba's initial appearance on the Covent Garden stage took place in May, 1888, as the ill-fated heroine of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor." Her success, both with the critics and with the public, was so spontaneous and overwhelming, that her engagement for the next (1889) London season was rendered inevitable. The new prima donna's principal appearance of 1889 was in Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette," while her performance in Verdi's "Rigoletto" exhibited how rapidly, to quote Mr. Parker's "Opera Under Augustus Harris," "Madame Melba's popularity was increasing in this country." In 1890 she created at Covent Garden the character of Ophelia in Dr. Ambroise Thomas's "Hamlet," which she had the advantage of rehearsing with the composer himself.

MADAME MELBA IN "LAKMÉ," 1890. From a Photo. by Dupont, Brussels.

In 1893 Melba went to America, to meet with a wholly unprecedented success; but in '94 she was back at Covent Garden, to charm huge audiences with her Nedda in Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" and her Marguerite in "Faust." Since then the cantatrice has appeared with regularity during the London opera season. Two of her most interesting appearances have been in "Carmen" three years ago, when that opera was performed with the extraordinarily strong cast of Madame Calvé as Carmen, Madame Melba as Michaela, and M. Alvarez as Don José; and in "Les Huguenotś" in 1896, when Albani was the Valentina, and Melba the Margherita de Valois. In that season, by the way, a gloom was cast over English musical life by the deaths of Sir Joseph Barnby and Sir Augustus Harris, the latter being a personal friend of Madame Melba, and of whom she cherishes many pleasant recollections.

MADAME MELBA AS LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, 1891. From a Photo. by Nadar, Paris.

But then, as I told the Australian prima donna, in her case "pleasant recollections" must of necessity multiply themselves, by virtue of the numbers of the world's great ones with whom her art and her remarkable gifts have brought her in contact. And yet she remains so wholly and entirely a "womanly woman," that I verily believe she values the esteem and admiration of the lowliest peasant as highly as that of the great ones of the earth.

In respect of the personal friendships to which I have just made reference, the diva has delightful remembrances of masters like the veteran Verdi, Charles Gounod (with whom she had the privilege of rehearsing his "Faust" and "Roméo et Juliette"), poor Goring Thomas, the creator of "Esmeralda," Tosti, and Puccini. In the case of the latter composer, she studied her part in his "La Bohème" (a new assumption) with him in Southern Italy last summer; and, if all that we hear be true, she is destined to win fresh laurels in the same composer's newest work, "La Tosca," in which Puccini does for Sardou's tragic story what Verdi has done for Shakespeare's "Othello."

Nellie Melba is a woman of rare enthusiasms. In conversation with me, she could not say too much in praise of Madame Matilde Marchesi—the only singing-teacher she has ever had—and whom she speaks of in terms of warmest affection and sympathy.

I asked the prima donna whether she has ever experienced the excitement and danger of a theatre fire. "Yes, on two occasions," she told me; "in San Francisco and in London. In both cases the danger was happily averted. At Covent Garden the outbreak happened actually on the stage during a performance of 'Faust,' and the curtain had to be rung down. I chanced to be in the 'wings' at the time, and while they were battling with the flames behind the curtain, I came in front and begged the people to remain seated. Fortunately that most terrible of calamities, a theatre panic, was averted. As soon as I found myself behind the scenes once more I committed the weakness of fainting."

There have been, not unnaturally, some striking incidents connected with Melba's enormous popularity at the Paris Opera House. There is one of them, however, to which a pathetic interest attaches by reason of the comparatively recent death of Madame Carnot, who figured in it in very sympathetic fashion. The opera was "Lucia di Lammermoor"—one of Melba's greatest, if not her very greatest assumption. It happened that the tenor, Monsieur Cossira, arrived at the Opera House feeling very unwell, but apparently recovering before the opera began he decided to go on. Early in the first act, however, he almost completely lost his voice! When it came to the duet with Lucia in the first act, it utterly failed him. The prima donna, full of sympathy for his difficulty, for a time sang his music as well as her own; but ultimately the curtain had to be rung down, and for a few moments it appeared as though the performance could not proceed, since—surely a thing unprecedented at the Paris Opera House—Monsieur Cossira was not provided with an understudy! As luck would have it, though, among the audience was M. Engel, who had sung the part with Melba, not long before, in Brussels. Grasping the situation, he went behind the scenes and proffered his services, which were gladly and gratefully accepted. The performance proceeded, and for several nights thereafter M. Engel sang the part.

"At the close of the evening," added Madame Melba, in telling me of the incident, "Madame Carnot sent for me. It was during Monsieur Carnot's reign at the Elysée, and so his wife was occupying the Presidential box at the Opera. Being a woman of very quick perception, Madame Carnot had observed my efforts at covering the confusion of my poor colleague. I can never forget her kind words to me then, nor shall I readily forget the sorrow I felt afterwards on hearing the news of President Carnot's terrible end, and of her own death subsequently."

By the time this interview appears in print, Madame Melba will be in the thick of her fifth visit to the United States. Her previous operatic tours of the American Continent have been full of varied and interesting experiences. One of the most characteristic "Melba stories" that I know dates from her last tour but one. It was at St. Louis, where, thanks to a late train, the diva and her company arrived only a very little time before the hour fixed for the commencement. There was, in fact, only just time for the artists to make for their respective dressing-rooms. But Melba, looking down from a coign of vantage into the orchestra, observed, to her dismay and annoyance, that her musicians were in morning dress. She promptly sent for the chef d'orchestre. The poor man expostulated, remonstrated; they had but a few minutes before come off the cars; there was no time, etc. But Melba was firm. "If the gentlemen of my orchestra do not choose to appear in evening dress, I shall refuse to go on the stage. I owe a duty to the public as well as to myself."

This inexorable mandate had its effect, and the musicians were soon seen filing out of the orchestra, to return a few minutes later, suitably clad in the evening garb of comparative civilization. Then the curtain rose and the opera commenced—only a very little behind time. The incident did not, however, pass unrecognised. The critics of the Press had seen the musicians disappear and re-appear, and correctly surmising the cause of their "quick change," the result was a series of graceful little articles in the St. Louis papers complimenting the popular favourite upon her sense of the fitness of things.

MADAME MELBA AS JULIETTE, 1892. From a Photo. by Dupont, Brussels.

An incident without precedent on the concert stage marked the concert which Melba gave at the Albert Hall, on November 2nd, to signalize her departure for her present trans-Atlantic tour. Of the three principal performers—i.e., Madame Melba herself, Miss Ada Crossley, the contralto, and Mr. Johann Kruse, the solo violinist—all were not only Australians, but Victorians by birth.

MADAME MELBA AS OPHÉLIE, 1895 From a Photo. by Reutlinger, Paris.

MADAME MELBA, 1893. From a Photo. by Renque et Cie, Paris.

Immediately after her few but brilliant appearances at Covent Garden last season, Madame Melba rented a charmingly-situated house, called "Fernley," near the river at Maidenhead. Here she entertained many friends during the month of August. A very interesting "group" photograph of three distinguished Australians—Melba, Mr. Haddon Chambers, and Mr. Bertram MacKennal—taken at that time on the lawn at Fernley, is shown at the top of this page. It will be interesting to your readers that the last-named distinguished compatriot of Madame Melba's is executing a bust of the diva, which she has decided to present to the Public Library of Melbourne. A bust of the Melbourne Melba, by the Melbourne MacKennal, is obviously an artistic event of peculiar interest.

MADAME MELBA, MR. HADDON CHAMBERS, AND MR. BERTRAM MACKENNAL. From a Photo. by H. Gude, Maidenhead.

By the way, the popular morning "daily" that unwittingly represented Melba as an athletic kind of lady, skilled in the gentle art of rowing, was sadly in error! Far and away the most interesting episode of the stay at Fernley was a visit which the prima donna and some members of her house-party paid to the grave of the poet Gray in Stoke Poges churchyard. Here, it will be remembered, Gray wrote his beautiful "Elegy"; and here, too, Melba (who, I omitted to say, is an accomplished organist, and often used to play that instrument in the Scots Church at Melbourne) expressed a desire to try the organ in the charming old church of Stoke Poges.

Thereby hangs this tale: The rector, on it being represented to him that "Madame Melba would like to play the organ," courteously handed over the necessary keys, and Melba gave great pleasure to her audience of half-a-dozen friends by playing and singing for them a selection of pieces, which included the Gounod "Ave Maria," and ended with the National Anthem. Asked by one of the party how she had enjoyed the impromptu sacred concert, the old lady who was in charge of the church, and whose services had been requisitioned to blow the organ, enthusiastically rejoined, "Oh, it were all beautiful, m'm, but 'God Save the Queen' were best of all!"

Madame Melba is fortunate in having some one member of her family—a brother or sister, generally speaking—to accompany her on her travels. During her last American tour she had for companions both a sister and a brother—Miss Dora and Mr. Ernest Mitchell—and she still speaks of the regret with which she parted from them when they were obliged to return to their Antipodean home about the end of the last London season. She says she is not less fortunate in having a man like Mr. Charles A. Ellis (originally the business manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) to personally conduct her trans-Atlantic tours. The present one will be very much extended, and will involve the traversing of many thousands of miles by the diva and her company. The principal members of that company are Ternina, Zélie de Lussan, and Gadski, Alvarez, Bonnard, Pandolfini, Kraus, and Bonderesque, and the orchestra is controlled by Signor Seppilli and Mr. Walter Damrosch. As for Melba's répertoire, it comprises not only two rôles quite new to her—"Martha" and "La Bohème"—but also "Lucia," "Hamlet," "Manon," "Les Huguenots," "La Traviata," "Rigoletto," "Faust," "Roméo et Juliette," and "Il Barbière di Siviglia"—in the last-named of which she scored such a shining success at Covent Garden last season. While on the subject of America, I may mention that Madame Melba seriously meditates refusing an offer for a season in South America, which I take to be the most dazzling and tempting ever made to a prima donna. She whimsically says that she thinks she would rather spend the greater part of 1899 in Europe, although she looks forward with pleasure to a visit to South America later on.

I am reminded of one more "Melba anecdote." Two or three years ago she took a party of friends to see the interior of La Scala, the noble opera-house where many of her triumphs have been won. Throwing open the door of a dressing-room, their cicerone exclaimed, "This is where the celebrated Melba used to dress!" The great singer's friends began to laugh, but she, looking hard at the man, quietly asked him, "What! don't you know me?" And then this son of Italy perceived that, sans voice and sans diamonds though she might be, she still was "Melba."

It is, I think, illustrative of Madame Melba's large humanity that the simpler and more sympathetic the anecdote, the better is she pleased to tell it. For example, "one touch of nature" is to her much more than to tell of her many meetings with Royalty—of her brilliant career as queen of opera—of her impressions of the many great ones of the world into whose society she has been thrown. Of her début in opera she readily speaks, for must it not always rank as one of her pleasantest memories? It occurred at the Brussels Opera House, and at the age of twenty-two. Not at that time knowing French, Melba was permitted to sing in Italian, while the other artists sang French—an unprecedented concession to a débutante on the part of the local opera authorities. On that memorable evening, the next box to the one occupied by some friends and relatives of Madame Melba contained a lady and gentleman. At the close of the first act, the latter asked his companion as to her opinion of the débutante, when the lady was heard to reply, "Débutante! Nonsense! I heard her in Madrid ten years ago. She was an awful failure, and she's forty if she's a day!"

"Did you feel any resentment when you heard the story?" I asked.

"Not in the least," replied Madame Melba, laughing merrily, "albeit in those early days I had not grown accustomed, as, alas! I have since, to hearing strangely false reports about myself—reports sometimes amazing, sometimes absurd, and sometimes, I fear, malicious. Besides, I was in far too good a humour with the public success I had achieved to feel angry; and if the story appears in your article, and the lady sees it, I shall feel amply avenged."

Two incidents in connection with her first American tour were related to me so feelingly by the prima donna, that I must do my best to reproduce them. The first occurred in New York. Melba had been practising her part at her hotel one afternoon. Just as she had finished, and was coming out of her rooms, she encountered a strange lady, whose rooms opened into the same corridor. The unknown approached her, and said, "Madame, I think you would be touched to hear what my little boy said just now. He is lying in bed getting over an illness; and when you began to sing he lifted his tiny forefinger and whispered, 'Hist, mummy! Birdie!'"

MADAME MELBA (PRESENT DAY). From a Photo. by Reutlinger, Paris.

The second incident referred to occurred one snowy night as the diva was leaving the stage-door of the Opera House at Philadelphia. An old lady, very neatly attired, but evidently not in affluent circumstances, was waiting for her as she crossed the foot-way to her carriage. When Madame Melba appeared the old lady remarked, "Madame, I have just heard you sing, and I've waited here in the hope that you will let me take your hand." Melba, deeply touched, impulsively kissed the old lady on either cheek. This salutation won from its recipient these simple words, which Melba says she will never forget, "God bless your beautiful heart, my dear!"

My interesting visit to Madame Melba terminated with, on my part, a very natural regret. I carried away with me an indelible impression—the impression of a queenly woman, an incomparable artist, bearing her unrivalled gifts and her regal position in the world of music with a simplicity and a womanly modesty which, while unable to enhance their value, add a singular grace and charm to their possession. And I found it a pleasing reflection that I had been accorded an audience of a queen who is delightfully unconscious of her sovereignty, and who, even if robbed of the gifts which now enchant the world, would still retain those qualities which enchant her friends—her bright intelligence, her ever-ready sympathies, and her true womanliness.

[His Home Coming]

BY E. M. JAMESON.

"Another present, Honor? I thought you had really received the last."

"So did I," replied Honor, sitting up in her low chair, and beginning to untie the string that was round the small parcel. "People are very kind; wonderfully kind."

Mrs. Latimer looked up quickly at the sound of the dejected voice. She was a slight, sweet-looking woman, in widow's dress, whose face, despite its never-varying sadness, bore traces of great beauty. The present proved to be a very beautiful pendant of emeralds and diamonds. Mrs. Latimer, having admired it as it lay on its satin bed, handed it back to her daughter.

"So kind of your Uncle James," she said, as she did so, watching meantime, with puzzled uneasiness, Honor's listless fingering of the jewel-case.

"Very kind!" remarked the girl, tilting her chin somewhat superciliously. "Am I not marrying a rich man? If Ronald had been poor, how would Uncle James have treated me?"

"Honor, Honor," said her mother, a pained look crossing her face, "how very unlike you to be so bitter."

Honor crossed over to where her mother sat and dropped down on the rug beside her, and taking one of her mother's hands pressed it to her cheek.

"He thinks it really, little mother, only you are too good to see it, and know too that I love Ronald so dearly that I'd marry him if he hadn't a second coat to put on. Uncle James, of all people!"—she threw the case into the chair she had just vacated, her blue eyes shining and hard—"Uncle James, who might have done so much, who might have saved his nephew from destruction by holding out a helping hand. Poor Jim!"

Her clear voice broke for a moment, then she pointed to a table in the corner that was covered with wedding presents.

"I'd give them all for one little note from Jim saying he was sorry and was coming to us. Just imagine if he came home and sat with us here in this very room! I cannot get him out of my thoughts to-night. Perhaps, somewhere, he is thinking of us."

Mrs. Latimer sank back in her chair, the tears coursing down her face.

"I pray night and morning that he may come back to us, and it seems as though God turned a deaf ear to all my pleadings. I dream of him, Honor, so often, our handsome boy, as he was before he went astray, and the awakening seems more than I can bear."

A pang shot through Honor's heart as she looked up into the fragile face, and she regretted having been carried away to speak of the prodigal.

"He will come back to us sooner or later," she said, hastily; "I am certain of it. He is too fond of us to go far astray. The threats Uncle James used terrified him."

"I am almost sorry we left the other house," Mrs. Latimer said, presently. "Suppose he came and found strangers occupying our place?"

"He has only to ask in the neighbourhood to find us no farther than the next road," said Honor. "Don't let that worry you. He will come home to us some day."

She spoke with a cheerfulness she was far from experiencing; the thought had often occurred to her that Jim, her only brother, must be dead. Heedless and headstrong he might be, but he had always possessed a warm heart, and would not have left them to anxiety for so long. Twice her wedding had been postponed, but the prodigal still delayed, and in a few days her marriage would be an accomplished fact.

Presently Mrs. Latimer said "good-night" and went to bed. After lighting her candle and watching her up the staircase, Honor returned to the room in which they had spent the evening. An unbearable restlessness was upon her, and she could settle to nothing, though there were notes to be written and a host of other things to be done.

She heard the servants troop up to bed, and then a silence fell upon the house, only broken by the melancholy soughing of the wind among the trees in the garden. The loneliness and silence told after a time, and she rose to follow her mother's example, though sleep was the farthest thing from her thoughts. She examined the window fastenings, and picking up the case containing the pendant, placed it among the presents on the table. The thought occurred to her that there ought to be a place in which to lock up the valuables, but in her preoccupation the fact troubled her little. Jim was the one absorbing thought, ousting even Ronald from her mind. A mental picture of Jim, destitute and starving, rose before her continually, embittering her life, and she could look forward to nothing until she was at rest about him.

She looked in at her mother on the way to her own room, and found her sleeping tranquilly. At the sight of the thin cheek on the pillow, Honor's heart contracted painfully; her mother grew paler and more fragile day by day, and the doctors had said that in the weak state of her heart a sudden shock might prove fatal. A tear dropped on the thin hand lying outside the counterpane, and Honor crept away to her own room. When ready for bed she lay in the darkness, feeling every nerve acutely on the alert.

The clock in the hall below ticked solemnly and struck the hour from time to time, and Honor could hear the faint sound of the cuckoo. She remembered the little bird as long as she could remember anything; from babyhood it had been the delight of herself and Jim, with its perky, impertinent manner, and the brisk way in which it bounced out and in again. Hot tears blinded Honor's eyes and soaked into her pillow.

"SHE LOOKED INTO THE WIDE HALL BELOW."

There came a faint sound from below, so faint as only to make the stillness more noticeable. The wind moaned round the house, but fitfully, as if a storm were gathering at a distance. Honor half sat up in bed, straining her ear to listen. There was not a stir in the house, yet she felt convinced that someone shared her vigil. Fearing her mother might be ill, and yet not wishing to disturb her if she slept, she drew herself noiselessly out of bed, and groped for her dressing-gown without striking a light. On her way she looked into the wide hall below. A faint glimmer illumined it, and her eyes soon became accustomed to the dim light. Someone stood facing the clock. Click! the doors flew open, and out sprang the cuckoo.

One, two, three. The doors closed again. There was a faint sound, which might have been a box of matches falling on the tiled floor. It was followed by a smothered exclamation. The figure stole away in the direction of the morning-room, where she and her mother had lately been sitting. Honor remained in the dark motionless, wondering what she had better do. All the servants were women, and to awaken them meant rousing her mother, and that she dare not do.

She gathered her dressing-gown closely round her and crept noiselessly from stair to stair, quivering all over as they creaked under her bare feet, but never pausing until she stood at the half-open door of the morning-room and looked in. What she saw froze her into immovability. A film swam before her eyes. It was Jim! The prodigal had returned, but why in this way? What could it mean? She rubbed her eyes incredulously. There was another man standing near the window, but it was upon Jim her glance was fixed with reluctant, fascinated horror.

"THE LIGHT FELL FULL UPON HER."

Jim leaned against the mantelpiece, his face was white and drawn, and in his eyes was reproduced some of the incredulity of Honor's.

"I can't, I tell you," he spoke in a low voice, that yet came clearly to the listener. "I promised, as it was to be the last time, but I break my word—I must get out of this, I tell you. That clock! My God! what I'd give not to feel such a scoundrel!"

"Clock? What are you raving about?" said the other. "What's wrong with the clock? They must strike, I suppose! Come on, let's get out of this. What's given you such a scare? You might have seen a ghost."

"So I have, the place is full of them. I must go; the very air stifles me." He stood upright and moved towards the door.

"Not a foot until you've done your share," replied the other, advancing, and Honor could see his evil, dissipated face; "don't desert an old chum."

"I wish to Heaven I had years ago, Hammersley. You've been my curse ever since I've known you. Let's clear out."

Honor started at the name, that of an old school-fellow. She pushed the door open farther, and the light fell full upon her, disclosing her white face with its glittering aureole of hair, and the blue eyes wide with pain.

Hammersley dropped the trinket he held with a little sharp tinkle, and drew back into the shade shamefacedly. But Honor never noticed him, all her glance was for Jim, who stood rigidly upright, staring at her as if she were a visitant from the grave.

"Honor!" the words came with difficulty from his parched throat. "You! What does it mean?"

Honor advanced a step nearer.

"Mean?" She spoke in a clear, relentless voice, half mad with the disgrace of it all. "Mean? It means that you have sunk so low as to rob your mother and sister of a few valuables. It means that you have broken into your mother's house like a common thief. No, no——" Her voice vibrated with a sharp throb of pain—"even the lowest, the most degraded, would think twice before robbing his own."

The light showed clearly all the misery of Jim's handsome, haggard young face.

"I swear to you——" he began, but Honor went on speaking, her voice low with concentrated scorn, and he drew back under the lash of her glance.

"Why did you not die years ago? Only to-night we were talking of you, praying that you might return, and this is how God answers our prayers!"

She pointed to the table, and Jim's head sank lower.

"Take them all if you want them, but go."

He moved blindly towards the door, and as he reached it, a footstep sounded along the passage, and Mrs. Latimer appeared. Before Honor could stir she had caught sight of Jim, and putting down the light she carried, she made a little run forward, and put her arms round his neck.

"God bless you, my own boy. I knew you would come," she said, and fell inertly with her cheek against his.

Above his mother's head, Jim's eyes met those of Honor, in anguished appeal. As he stood holding his mother in his arms his punishment seemed greater than he could bear.

A fresh fear took possession of Honor, and for a moment she dared not ascertain the worst. Had not the doctors talked of a sudden shock?

"Bring her here," she said, indicating a couch close by; "she must never know, poor, poor mother!"

In the bustle that ensued Hammersley made good his escape, unnoticed by anyone. Honor applied restoratives, and after a long time Mrs. Latimer came back to consciousness. Her glance sought for Jim; Honor motioned him over.

"My own darling boy, why did you come back so late? How thin and white you are! We must feed him well, must we not, Honor?"

"SHE PUT HER ARMS ROUND HIS NECK."

She stroked his face as he bent over her, and under her loving trust and entire unconsciousness of the true facts of the case Jim suddenly broke down, and, like a penitent child, buried his face in a fold of her dressing-gown. And she never knew the truth. But even Honor, who knows, has perfect faith now in Jim.

[In Nature's Workshop.]

By Grant Allen.

I.—SEXTONS AND SCAVENGERS.

In a certain sense, all animated nature is but a single vast co-operative society. I am no foolish optimist: I will admit, indeed, that the members of the society so composed often display to one another the most unfriendly and unfraternal spirit. The hawks, for instance, show a distinct want of true brotherly love towards the larks or the tom-tits: and the mice and lizards find the owls and the cats by no means clubbable. The co-operative society is hardly what one could call a happy family. Still, in spite of the fact insisted upon by the poet that "Nature is one with rapine—a harm no preacher can heal," it is none the less true that a certain rough balance, an accommodation or adjustment of part to part, occurs in every department of animal and vegetable life. When we come to think, it could hardly be otherwise. Things can only exist if they contain in themselves the conditions necessary to existence. An unadapted animal or plant perishes instantly. Spiders could not live in an island which contained no flies; kingfishers necessarily presuppose fish; and silkworms imply the presence of mulberry leaves. You cannot have vultures wild in a country where there are no dead animals lying about loose: nor can you keep bees except where there are honey-bearing flowers. Dutch clover depends for its very existence upon a few insects which fertilize it and set its seeds. The draining of the fens killed out a dozen species of English plants and animals; the inclosure of the prairies deprived the buffaloes of their chance of pasture. In this sense, all nature hangs together as it were; each species fills some place in the great mosaic which cannot be altered without considerable disturbance of adjacent pieces. Destroy the rabbits in a given area, and you have nothing left for the weasels to feed upon.

Sometimes, too, apparently unimportant or unnoticed creatures perform in the aggregate some valuable work for the rest of the plant and animal community, which little suspects its real indebtedness to them. Darwin showed long ago that the humble and despised earthworm was really answerable for the greater part of that rich layer of vegetable mould or soil which covers the bare rocks; it deposits the material in which all our plants root and from which they derive a large element of their sustenance. Kill out the earthworms over the whole of our earth, and you would reduce a vast proportion of it to the condition of a desert. For the worms pull down green leaves into their neat little burrows; and the refuse of these leaves, continually renewed from season to season by the industrious small workmen, forms by far the greater share of that dark layer of vegetable mould which is the chief source of the fertility in plains and lowlands. Sandy upland spots, where worms are few, form little or no soil, and will only support a poor moorland growth of gorse and heather. You must have plenty of worms if you want to grow corn or turnips.

But there are other unconsidered creatures besides these, creatures which perform for us functions almost as useful and important as those of the earthworms; and I propose to devote a few pages here to one such group, the sanitary commissioners of the insect world, as I will venture to call them—the vast body of minor sextons and six-legged scavengers. Has it ever struck you that as you walk abroad through the rich green meadows and pastures of England, you almost never come across a dead and decaying animal? I do not mean large animals like horses and donkeys: those do sometimes occur unburied, giving us bold and unpleasant advertisement of their near presence. But just consider that the fields through which you stroll are a perfect warren of moles and shrews and field-mice and water-voles and frogs and lizards and rabbits and weasels, to say nothing of smaller fry; and then think how seldom on your morning rounds in the country you come across a single dead bird or rat or adder, a departed toad, or a late lamented leveret. The ground about you teems with life: but where are its cemeteries? Squirrels and dormice are dying in every copse: but what becomes of their bodies? Who ever saw a dead bat? Who knows the tomb of the deceased hedgehogs?

Of course a great many of the smaller animals die a violent death, and find their living grave in the maw of their devourers—one must admit that explanation as covering a very large number of cases. Thirty field-mice have been disinterred from the stomach of a single buzzard when it was shot in the act of digesting after a good dinner; and owls and snakes are answerable for the fate of no small proportion of our minuter wild animals. In other countries, too, vultures and jackals devour most of the carrion as it lies; while even in England we have a few dead-meat-eaters, such as the carrion-crow, the rat, and the shrike. But for the most part our rural English public scavengers are smaller and less conspicuous creatures. Foremost among them in number and utility we may reckon the various kinds of burying beetle.

If you do find the body of a mouse or shrew lying unburied in England, it occurs almost always on a path or high-road. Now this fact is in itself significant; for the high-road is practically a man-made desert, so hardened and steam-rollered, so pounded and wheel-ridden, that no plant can grow on it; so exposed that small animals will only scurry across it for dear life in fear and trembling; and so difficult to dig into that no burrowing creature can hope to worm his toilsome way through it. Hence the animals that die on the road are almost never buried; while those that die in the field or copse are either eaten at once by larger beasts, or else decently interred within a few hours by the sexton beetles and other established scavengers. Indeed, a common superstition exists among country folk that one of the small long-nosed, insect-eating animals known as shrews cannot so much as cross a road without being killed instantly. A human track is supposed to be fatal to them. The superstition has arisen in this way: shrews die of cold and hunger in great numbers at the approach of winter. A certain proportion of them perish thus in the open fields; these, however, are immediately buried by the proper authorities, the sexton beetles. But a few happen to die as they are crossing a road or path; these lie where they fell, because the sextons cannot there pierce the hard ground, and seldom even dare venture on the road to carry them off to softer spots for burial. The rustic sees dead shrews in the road, and none on the open ground: so he hastily concludes in his easy-going way that to cross a human path is sudden death to shrews, who are always supposed for other reasons to be witch-like and uncanny animals. If the road leads to a church, a fatal stroke is specially certain: for the shrews, like all witch-creatures, hate Christianity.

I need hardly say, however, that the burying beetles do not perform their strange funereal office out of pure benevolence, without hope of reward. Like human sextons and undertakers, they adopt their lugubrious calling for the sake of gain: they expect to be paid for their sanitary services. The payment is taken in two forms: one, immediate, as food for themselves: the other, deferred, as board and lodging for their children.

1.—GROUPS OF MISCELLANEOUS SEXTON BEETLES, DISCOVERING A DEAD FIELD-MOUSE.

Our illustration No. 1 introduces us to a typical miscellaneous group of these insect scavengers, occupied in appropriating a very fine and desirable carcass on which they have just lighted. A field-mouse, vanquished by fate in the struggle for existence, has lately "turned up his toes" in the most literal sense, and lies unburied, like Archytas, on the loose sand of a bare patch in a meadow. All carrion-eating creatures are remarkable for their powerful sense of smell: and the sexton beetles, like the vultures and condors, are no exception to the rule. They sniff their prey from afar: for where the carcass is, there shall the carrion beetles be gathered together. All are eager to take their share of the feast, and still more to lay their eggs in the dead body. Some of them may crawl up from the immediate neighbourhood; others, summoned from afar, come flying on their gauze-like wings from considerable distances. They are, as a rule, nocturnal creatures, and they come out on their burying expeditions by night alone.

The insect just alighting from his flight, in the upper part of the illustration, is the burying beetle par excellence among our British kinds; he rejoices (we are always supposed to rejoice foolishly in our personal designations) in the dignified title of Necrophorus vespillo. In stature he measures about an inch long, and he is a handsome beast, with two bright orange bands on his hard wing-covers. The illustration shows these wing-covers raised, as is the habit of beetles when they fly, while the thin but powerful wings beneath them are expanded as true pinions. When the insect alights, he folds the wings up carefully and replaces them under the hard protective wing-covers: he is then securely armour-plated from head to foot, and need fear no foe, save birds which swallow him whole—a very tough morsel—and hedgehogs which crunch him in their strong jaws before eating him. However, he is well prepared for all such enemies, for he can exude when attacked a very nasty fluid with a disgusting smell: and this mode of defence, which resembles that of the skunk and the polecat, usually protects him from obtrusive inquirers. He must be handled with caution, as the perfume he diffuses spoils woollen clothes and clings to the fingers after two or three washings.

2.—THE SEXTONS AT WORK: BURYING THE BODY.

As a rule, when a carcass appears, a pair of burying beetles of the same species—a husband and wife—fly up to the scene of operations together and take possession of the prey; though in the illustration Mr. Enock has represented several kinds engaged at once in staking out claims, which indeed happens often enough in nature. But if you count the number on any one dead bird or animal, you will almost always find they are even in number—in other words, so many pairs, male and female. No. 2 shows us the next act in the funeral drama. The male beetles, after satisfying their own immediate hunger, proceed to bury the carcass in a very curious and laborious manner. You would wonder how so small a creature could produce so great a result: the fact is, the beetles attain their end by continuous under-cutting. The female hides herself in the body: the male buries her alive and the dead creature with her. He first drags the mouse, frog, or bird to a suitable spot where the soil is soft enough to admit of excavation; and sometimes three or four males have to combine for this purpose. They then proceed to dig with their heads, which are tools specialized for the purpose, and provided with strong and powerful muscles. The antennæ have also assumed for this object a short club-shaped type, very suitable for a navvy's mattock. The little engineers begin by excavating a furrow all round the body, and then a second inside that again, throwing the earth out of each into the previous one: and so on till the carcass begins to sink into the hollow. They then dig and tunnel beneath it, carrying out loads of earth, one after another, till bit by bit the carcass collapses into the hole, first in front, then behind, and has reached a level considerably below the surface. Then they throw in the earth they have excavated, and cover up the body with the females inside it; after which, I regret to say, they proceed to hold a very cannibalistic funeral service above it. The funeral service consists in eating as much of the body as they desire for their own purposes: when they have satisfied their appetite, they begin to think of the interests of posterity. The mother beetle proceeds to lay her tale of eggs in the decently-buried body, for every animal knows by instinct the precise place in which to deposit its young and the precise food which happens to suit them.

After the eggs are laid, the two parent beetles crawl out of the hole and cover it carefully up so as to conceal the hiding-place. So far as they themselves are concerned, their only object in all this is to procure food for themselves and their infant young. But the wider effects of such scavenger insects go very far. For we now know that there is no disinfectant so good as the top layer of the soil, which is not really mere dead earth (as most people imagine), but a mingled mass of ramifying life—a little foundation of clay and sand intermixed with endless minute organisms, both animal and vegetable—fungi, bacteria, mites, weevils, and all sorts of petty creatures, which eat up and destroy harmlessly all dead matter subjected to their influence. The earth is thus a most admirable deodorizer and purifier: and burial in its top layers, the body being freely exposed to the rapid action of the devouring microbes, is a most sanitary mode of disposing of refuse. Thus the part that is played in the East by vultures and jackals, or by the wild dogs of Constantinople, is far more effectually and unobtrusively played in our fields and meadows by the many kinds of burying beetles and other insect scavengers. If we remember how great a nuisance a single dead rat becomes in a house, we can faintly picture to ourselves the debt we owe to these excellent and unnoticed little sanitary commissioners. Without them, our fields would not smell so fresh, nor would our flowers bloom so bright; for we must remember that by burying the dead beasts they are not only preventing disease but also manuring the pastures in the best possible fashion. The bones of small animals decay rapidly and make excellent material for the growth of vegetation. The beetles as a rule hunt by night only, and find their prey, as vultures do, by the sense of smell. When they first find it, the male hovers above it like an eagle, circling round and round, so as to point it out to his mate; the female flies straight to it, and buries herself without delay in the rich banquet.

But what becomes at last of the buried bodies? No. 3 will show you. The female beetle lays in each body about as many eggs as she thinks it will support. In a very short time the eggs hatch out, and the grubs begin to devour the abundant feast provided for them. The two grubs to the right in the illustration are the young of our friend the orange-banded burying beetle: the one to the left is a larva of an allied form known by the poetical name of Silpha. They set to work at once on the remains of the mouse, and thoroughly strip the bones of every fibre of flesh. As soon as the skeleton is bare, they consider it time to leave off feeding, and pass on to the second stage of their existence—the pupa, or mummy-case.

3.—THE GRUBS UNDERGROUND; FEEDING UPON THE BODY.

As larvæ, the young burying beetles look like worms, and have six short legs. No. 4 shows them in the intermediate stage, when they have retired into a clay cell, or cocoon, and are undergoing their transformation into the perfect insect. We are here supposed to have removed the soil on one side so as to give a view into the concreted earthen chambers where the pupæ are changing into full-grown beetles. You can see the much longer legs of the adult insect beginning to develop, while the head assumes slowly its later form. The grubs remain in the cocoon through the winter, and emerge in spring as winged beetles, when they fly away with their brilliant wing-cases raised, in search of congenial mates and more dead field-mice. The best places to look for all these beetles are the "keeper's trees," on which game-keepers hang up the jays and weasels they shoot, to encourage the others. If you tap one such dead weasel you will generally find it is simply swarming with insect life.

4.—NO MORE LEFT! THE GRUBS IN THEIR COCOONS TURNING INTO BEETLES.

Yet, strange to say, even the insect undertakers themselves are not without their ideas of beauty and their musical perceptions. The orange bands of our commonest English kind have been developed as attractions for their admiring mates; and the male beetles have also a musical instrument of their own in the shape of a peculiar rasp-like ring on the body, which they can rub against the wing-cases, and so produce a much-appreciated chirping. Such instrumental music is always employed, like the song of birds, as a charm to heighten the attractiveness of the suitor: and male burying beetles may be heard on the evenings of sunny days competing with one another in musical contests. Indeed, it often happens that animals which seem to us disgusting or unclean display among themselves much æsthetic taste, and are gifted with more sense of beauty or love of music than many other forms where our human eyes would be more inclined to look for the presence of these higher endowments.

I may add that if the beetles left the bodies in which they laid their eggs to lie above ground, the bodies would dry up, and the eggs would run much greater risks. By burying the dead animal, they provide their young with food and shelter together, and so display considerable intelligence.

Another very distinct group of insects which act as scavengers in a different way in hotter climates than ours are the famous scarabs or sacred beetles, worshipped almost like gods by the ancient Egyptians. English people know the scarabs best, I think, in the neighbourhood of Naples, or on the Lido at Venice—that great bank of sand and shingle which separates the lagoons from the open Adriatic. When wearied with sight-seeing at St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace, we have, most of us, taken the little steamer that runs across to the baths on the Lido, and spent a pleasant hour or two in picking up shells and dried sea-horses on the firm belt of beach that stretches away to Malamocco. A little inland, the beach gives way to dry sand-hills, blown about by the wind, and over-grown by patches of blue-green marram-grass and other sandy seaside weeds. If you lie down on one of these sand-hills, choosing a spot not quite so dirty as its neighbours, you will soon be amused by seeing a curious little comedy going on perpetually around you in every direction. A number of odd-looking beetles, with long hind legs and very quaint heads, are occupied with ceaseless industry in rolling a lot of dark, round balls almost as big as themselves along the slopes of the sand-hills. In many places, the whole ground is alive with the tugging and pushing little beasts: indeed, when you come to look close you will find that every half acre of sand on the Venetian shore or the lower edge of the Egyptian desert is a perfect city of these busy wee creatures. Earth is honeycombed with their holes, towards which innumerable beetles are continually rolling their mysterious balls at every possible angle.

Now, what are the balls composed of? There comes the oddest part of the whole odd proceeding. The plain truth of it is that the sacred beetles are assistant scavengers—imperfect Southern and Oriental substitutes for a main drainage system. The balls consist of dung, dirt, and refuse, and the beetles collect them on the open, dry them hard in the sun, roll them to the mouths of their burrows, and then live on them till the ball has all been eaten. It is the funniest thing in the world to watch them. They tumble about in the loose sand and stumble over little eminences in the most comical fashion. No. 5 shows a pair of scarabs engaged in this habitual and quaint amusement. They have each collected a round mass of manure, and rolled and dried it nicely into shape; they are now engaged in trundling their booty off at their leisure to a place of safety. But they are obliged to push the balls backward with their long hind legs: and as this precludes the possibility of the scarab seeing where it is going, each beetle pauses every now and again and turns round, like a man sculling in a boat alone, to look what is ahead of him. Sometimes in doing so he loses his ball, a misfortune which has just happened to the beetle on the right in No. 5. The precious pellet goes bounding off down hill as fast as gravitation will take it. In this case, the disappointed little workman faces round and darts after it at full speed, going forward now instead of backward, and trying to head the ball as it rolls down the uncertain slope of the sand-hills. If he succeeds, he puts himself in front of the ball as it falls, catches it with his hind legs, and begins once more laboriously to push it backward up hill again, towards the mouth of his hole. But as the pellets roll quickly, and the beetles are by no means rapid runners, he seldom succeeds in recovering his own property, unless the ball happens to catch for a moment on some projecting little hillock of sand, or be checked on its downward course by a weed, a stick, or a dead shell or starfish.

5.—SACRED SCARABS ROLLING THEIR FOOD-BALLS BACKWARD (THE INSECT TO THE RIGHT HAS LOST HIS DINNER).

On the other hand, the scarabs, I fear I must admit, are terrible thieves; and if one scarab has lost his own ball, and sees some companion's pellet come rolling down hill towards him, he will often give up the pursuit of his lost property, and quietly and barefacedly appropriate his neighbour's. I have seen great fights take place at times over a disputed ball; though sometimes the combatants agree amicably to roll it along in common, and probably share it when they have reached their hole. Sometimes, again, three or four will unite to roll a ball: and then, when one loses it, the others combine to hold it up or catch it. I have spent hours together both in Egypt and on the Mediterranean or the Adriatic in watching the queer antics of these comic little commissioners of drainage: and I never tire of observing their odd and unexpected combinations of interest. I have sometimes known the real owner abandon a ball in despair, from the unevenness of the ground, and then seen a couple of outsiders come up and succeed in doing what the true owner had been unable to accomplish.

In No. 6 you see two such scarabs whose toil has at last been crowned by success, and who are delivering their balls with joy into the holes in the sand which form their residences. As far as I can make out, a pair of beetles, male and female, seem usually to share a hole in common, and to roll balls of food to it either alone or in concert. I cannot say I have ever seen much co-operation except between such partners. Once a ball is secured and safely landed—for here, as elsewhere, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip—the happy couple proceed to eat it up, and apparently do not emerge again from their burrow till the supply is exhausted. Patient naturalists say that one ball has been known to last a scarab as long as a fortnight, but this I do not vouch for of personal knowledge. When more food is wanted, the couple emerge once more on the open sand and begin to collect fresh dung and refuse, which they roll into a new food-ball and then dry and harden.

6.—PRIMITIVE GOLF—END OF A ROUND: THE SCARABS HOLING THEIR BALLS.

Till very lately, it was universally believed that the female scarab laid an egg in some of the balls, and that the young grubs hatched within such food-stocks and began at once to devour them. This belief has recently been contradicted with great emphasis by a good French observer, who opened many balls and found no eggs; but I cannot accept his conclusion. I opened numbers of balls myself near Venice this year, and saw in several one or two eggs, while in one case (unearthed from a hole) I discovered a half-grown larva. I venture therefore in this matter to believe my own eyes as against those of even the most celebrated and authoritative entomologists.

In Egypt, it has been universally believed from all antiquity—and I think quite rightly—that after the scarab has laid an egg in the ball, the parents unite in rolling it to a place of safety, above the level of the annual inundation due to the rise of the Nile. At any rate, scarabs abound in Egypt. At a very early date, it would seem, the curious action of these beetles attracted the attention of the ancient Egyptians, whose worship of animals was one of the most marked features in their monstrous religion. Hence grew a strange and widespread superstition. A race which deified the hawk, the cat, the ibis, and the jackal was not likely to overlook the marvellous proceedings of the pious and dutiful scarab. So the very early Egyptians, we may conjecture, began by thinking there must be something divine in the nature of an insect which worked so ceaselessly on behalf of its young, and rolled such big round balls behind it up such relatively large hillocks. Watching a little closer, as time went on, the Egyptian discovered, no doubt, that sacred beetles did not proceed directly from sacred beetles, like lambs from ewes, but grew, as it were, out of the dirt and corruption of the mysterious pellets. A modern observer would, of course, at once suspect that the scarab laid an egg inside the ball, and would promptly proceed to pull one open and look for it. But that cold scientific method was not likely to commend itself to the mystic and deeply religious Egyptian mind. The priests by the Nile jumped rather to the conclusion that the scarab collected dirt in order to make a future scarab out of clay, and that from this dirt the young beetle grew, self-existent, self-developed, self-created. Considering the absence of scientific knowledge and comparative groups of scientific facts at the time, such a conclusion was by no means unnatural.

Once started on so strange a set of ideas, the Egyptians proceeded to evolve a worship of the scarab which grew ever and developed, as they thought the scarab itself did, practically out of nothing. The immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body were the central ideas of Egyptian religion; the thinkers of Thebes and Memphis instantly perceived a fanciful analogy between the scarab rising from its bed of dirt and the mummy reviving when the expected day of resurrection should at last arrive. As a consequence of this analogy, the scarab was made sacred: it was reverenced during its life and often preserved after its death, like the mummied cats and hawks and sacred Apis bulls which formed such special objects of veneration to the devout of Egypt. All sorts of mystic relations were also discovered before long in the scarab: its "toes" were counted as thirty, and held to symbolize the days of the month: it was said to be male only, without a female, and so to typify the creative power and the paternal or masculine principle in nature. Sun-worship, as we know, formed a large part of the later (though not of the most primitive) Egyptian religion: and the ball rolled by the scarab was therefore supposed to personify Ra, the great sun-god. In one way or another, the sanctity and the mystic implications of the scarab grew and grew, age after age, until at last scarab-worship became one of the chief practical elements in the religion of Egypt. There was a scarab-headed god, and scarab hieroglyphs appear on the face of all the monuments.

It is as a charm or amulet, however, that the ancient Egyptian imitation scarab is best known. From a very early period in the history of the Nile valley it became usual for luck's sake to bury some of these sacred beetles with the mummy, perhaps alive (in which case most of them would no doubt creep out again) and perhaps also dead. A few real scarabs have thus been found here and there in tombs. But for the most part, just as the Egyptians buried little porcelain images to accompany the mummy, so they buried porcelain or stone scarabs; and these were rather closely imitated from the living insect, but made still more sacred by being enamelled or engraved with the holy name of some king or god. Scarabs of this kind, inscribed with sacred words, and regarded as talismans, form some of the commonest objects disinterred in all the Egyptian excavations: one of them, from a specimen in the British Museum, is illustrated in No. 7. Comparison with the live beetles in the other engravings will show how well the Egyptians copied nature in this instance.

7.—AN EGYPTIAN SACRED SCARAB, IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

These beautiful and often costly Egyptian scarabs have been made the subject of very exhaustive study by various writers, more particularly by Mr. Loftie and Mr. Flinders Petrie. The Egyptians did not coin money, so that scarabs bearing the names of kings came to have somewhat the same importance for Egyptian history as coins have for the history of later civilized nations. Mr. Loftie traces the origin of the inscribed scarabs to a very early epoch in the Egyptian annals. "From the earliest times until the end of the native monarchy," he says, "certain usages continued unchanged. Among them was the inscription of names and texts on scarabs. The beetle which rolls before it"—he ought rather to have said behind it—"a ball of mud in which its egg is concealed was, at some period so remote that we cannot even approximately date it, seized upon as the embodiment of the idea of futurity.... The scarab, burying his egg, became the symbol of the resurrection, of the happy time to come, of a re-creation of all things; and with every corpse scarabs were buried, and scarabs were sewed upon the shroud, and strung into a network to cover the body, and suspended round the neck, and clasped in the dead hands. As many as three thousand scarabs have been found in one tomb, and the number in existence in museums and private collections is past count." Some of these imitation beetles are of blue pottery, enamelled outside; but others are of lapis lazuli, jade, carnelian, and many other precious stones. Sacred in themselves by their very form, that of the revered insect god, they are rendered still more sacred by their mystic inscriptions, which consist of appropriate religious phrases in hieroglyphic writing.

From Egypt, the belief in the luck and value of engraved scarabs as charms or amulets passed on to the Greeks, and also to the Etruscans. Many Greek scarabs have been found; and in the old Etruscan tombs such lucky beasts are comparatively common. They are mostly made more or less in imitation of the Egyptian originals. Oddly enough, even the early Christians themselves did not at once get over the belief in the sanctity and talismanic character of the sacred beetle, for the Rev. W. J. Loftie has pointed out examples of late scarabs engraved with undoubted Christian symbols—not only crosses but even crucifixes. In our own days, a slight revival of the antique superstition has once more taken place, and some ladies of my acquaintance wear specimens of the old sacred beetles as charms in brooches or suspended on their watch-chains.

Though such numbers of true ancient scarabs have been unearthed in Egypt, still the supply of the genuine article does not quite keep pace with the increasing demands of the modern tourist: and there is now a flourishing manufactory of sham antiques at Luxor, where hundreds of false scarabs with nice imitation hieroglyphic inscriptions are neatly turned out for the market every season.

About sixty different kinds of live scarabs are known to inhabit the Mediterranean district in Europe, Asia, or Africa: and four of these kinds can be easily distinguished as being individually represented in the old Egyptian gems. We have no true scarab of this class living in Britain: but there are other scavenger beetles which take their place, the best known being the common dorbeetle. One of the same family, but with a quaintly horned head, exists in vast numbers on the Surrey hills where I have pitched my tent. The English dung-beetle burrows in the soft sandstone, and throws up neat little heaps of clean sand at the mouth of its hole, like miniature molehills. Still, our English scavenger beetles—known to science as Geotrupes—are not nearly so clever or so interesting as the southern type, for the female in our sort merely grubs a straight tunnel in the ground, and lays her egg in a loose mass of dung, which she drags to the bottom in a shapeless condition. This beetle utters a plaintive buzzing cry when it is chasing its mate—a soft of "last appeal" which seems calculated to soften the heart of the hardest lady beetle. It is as cunning in its way as most others of its race, for if you catch it in your hand, it at once draws in its legs to its side and "shams dead." All the English and foreign scavenger beetles perform a useful task by following up animals and clearing away their refuse; indeed, a special kind of beetle lays itself out as scavenger for each species of large animal, one kind being attached to the cow, one to the donkey, one to the camel, and so on through a long list of patrons and satellites.

You will thus see that in this wider sense all creation moved together like a vast joint-stock co-operative society, each kind working consciously for its own good alone, but each also in a certain deeper and unconscious way contributing to the general well-being of all, by its exercise of some special function. Nevertheless, the function is always performed by each plant or animal itself for its own purposes; it only incidentally serves to benefit the others. Thus the burying beetles and the scavenger beetles work first of all and ostensibly for their own food and the food of their offspring: it is merely as an incidental result, undesigned by themselves, that they assist in purifying the air and the soil for all other species. Or, to put it still more simply, while these industrious little creatures are working individually for their own ends, they are also in the wider scheme of nature working unconsciously and almost unwillingly in the service of others. Nature bribes each kind, as it were, by some personal advantage to perform good work for the benefit of the totality.

The good work performed by the scavengers may be thus summed up. If dead bodies and the refuse of food were left about everywhere freely on the open, germs of disease and putrefaction would fly about much more commonly than even at present. But a large number of scavenger animals, scavenger birds, and scavenger insects—hyenas, vultures, burying beetles, and so forth—act as public servants to prevent this calamity. Again, the earth needs the bodies and the refuse as fertilizers: and many of the scavengers carry down such materials into the first layer of the soil, where they become of enormous use in promoting the freer growth of vegetation. Thus, long before men learnt to bury their dead or to manure their fields, nature had invented both these processes, and registered them, so to speak, in the instincts and habits of a special class of insect sextons and sanitary inspectors. It is always so in life. There is hardly a human trade or a human activity which does not find its counterpart somewhere in animal or vegetable life: and it will be my object, in future numbers of these papers, to set before you in other directions some such natural anticipations or foreshadowings of man's inventions.

[Weepin' Willie]

By Albert Trapmann

I.

Private William Fox was swaggering down the road to Shorncliffe Camp; that is to say, he was trying to swagger as much as his 5ft. 2in. of stature would allow. For the prettiest girl in Folkestone was holding on affectionately to his left arm, and in his right hand he displayed to full advantage his new silver-topped cane, the result of several weeks' savings.

"Little Willie," as his comrades of the 210th line called him, was the most "special" of "special enlistments." He had enlisted at a time when a war scare was running riot throughout the country, and the inspector-surgeon had passed him, saying that he was sure to grow to standard height as he was only just eighteen, although it was evident to anyone who glanced at the set look of his shoulders that he would never be a hair's-breadth taller than he was. It was certainly rather trying to his three-month-old martial dignity to have the street urchins asking him as he strutted through the town whether "his ma knew he was out"—but that was nothing to the jeers of the men of his company, and Little Willie had not found the life of a soldier of the Queen as alluring as the recruiting sergeant had painted it.