Hilton's, in Wilton Crescent, and said she would give him five shillings. The man said, "Yes, he would," and Austin thanked him, and as he stepped through the crowd into the prison van, he looked round for his dog, but could not see him.

Robin had seen him, though, and was quite contented. His master, thought he, was busy to-day, and was now going for a drive. Robin had waited for Austin in all sorts of places, for all sorts of times, and had seen Austin get into all sorts of carriages and drive away without thinking about him. His custom, on these occasions, was to tear along the street, in front of the vehicle into which Austin had got-be it cab, carriage, or omnibus-with joyous bark, ready to take his part in the next pleasant adventure which should befal. So now he dashed through the crowded Old Bailey at the hazard of his life, racing and leaping in front of the prison-van which held his ruined and desperate master, as if this were the best fun of all.

The van took Austin to the great bald prison by the river-side, and he was hurried in. The cruel iron door clanged behind him, and sent its echoes booming through the long dismal whitewashed corridors. And the clang of that door fell like a death

sages beyond. The blue-coated warders would whistle to him, and say, "Here, poor fellow!" but he would only shake his long drooping tail for an instant, almost imperceptibly, and stand where he was. If there was a stranger present, the bluecoated warders would tell him, that that was the dog of a young swell, they had got inside for duelling, and that that dog had been there for above a week. Then the door would be shut again, and Robin would take his old post in the sun, and catch the flies.

For more than ten days he stayed there. At the end of that time he went away. The great door was open one day, and three or four warders were standing about. Robin had gone into the middle of the street, when a very tall, handsome young man came. walking by with his eyes fixed on the prison.

He nearly stumbled over Robin. When Robin saw him, he leaped upon him, and the young man caught him in his bosom. And the young man was of the Scotch nation, for he said

"It's his nin dog, if it's no his ain self. What, Robin, boy, do ye mind Gil Macdonald, and the bonny hill-sides of Ronaldsay!"

CHAPTER XI.

So went matters outside the prison-door, in the bright summer sunshine. Inside that door a generous, noble-minded, unselfish young man; a young man who had, in his time, according to the light which had been shown him, his lofty aspirations towards the only good he knew of, political and social success; was left without a friend or a hope, beating himself to desperation and death against his prisonbars. Dare you come in?

But, in going, we may take this comfort with us: Austin would have required very long drilling to have made a high place in public life. Of that I feel quite sure. He was far too impulsive and thoughtless; far too prone to believe the last thing which was told him, to accept the last theory put before him, and to say that it must be the best; to have

succeeded. Practice would have given him the power of closing his ears to argument, and acting only on foregone conclusions. Practice might have given him the trick of listening to his opponent, and ignoring all his sound arguments, catching him when he tripped; would have, in time, formed him into a shallow and untruthful debater, of the third class, like (Heaven help us, where are we getting to now?) He was born for nobler things than to be a little dog, doing the barking for big dogs, with thick skins and strong nerves, who meant biting. He would, I fear, have dropped into a low place. His habit of seeing the best side of all opinions, and of having none of his own, his terror of adverse criticism, and his almost childish anger against opponents, would have made him but a poor man for public life. He would have successively believed all creeds, till he had none of his own.

That June morning we know of, they shut the gate behind him, and he knew that it was all over and done. He felt that he had died his first death, and that the clang of that door was as the rattling of the earth on his coffin. At that moment, he saw, so great is Divine mercy, among the burnt ashes of his past life, one gleaming spark of hope; he had,

at all events, seen the worst, short of death; he was young and the world was large; his imprisonment would be over soon, only a year. The world was very large. There were other worlds besides this cruel, inexorable English one.

But that spark of hope disappeared for a time, when the sordid unbeautiful realities of his prison life began to be felt. His idea was, that he would be locked up between four walls, and left to eat his heart, until his time was out. Lucky for him it was not so. There were rules in that prison, so degrading, that his mere loathing of them kept him from going mad. Little acts of discipline and punctuality, which, in his sane mind, he would have acknowledged as necessary, but which now irritated him. He had to go to chapel in the morning; he had to come out to the door of his cell, and touch his cap to the governor; and to do other things worse than this, little things, which he would not so much have cared to do when free; little things which, had he been travelling, in the desert or the bush, he would have laughed over, yet which now, when he was forced to do them, degraded him. He did not know, till afterwards, that, by powerful interest, all prison rules possible to be relaxed, had been re