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'He does not seem to have done himself much,' said Lawrence. He does not let out much about himself; but he has been roaming about since he was eighteen; he did tell me that much; and seems no nearer settling down than at first. I daresay he has led a queer life, if one could only know about it.'

'Which one can't. And yet, what a way of worming things out of other people he has! I didn't like him a bit, and yet he knows as much about me as I should tell to the person I liked best -he knows all about me, in fact-except the fact that I'm married-and I daresay he has a pretty general notion of your past and present also.'

'Yes; I have nothing to hide-certainly not a sweet, pretty, little wife, as you have-and, as he seemed interested about our friendship and partnership, I told him our story-the "short and simple annals of the poor"-and how that old ruffian in India had treated me. He said rather a good thing, by-the-bye, characteristic of him, I fancy: "Why the devil didn't you go out to India, and make it deuced unpleasant for the old screw? You'd have brought him to reason that way, and done it much cheaper than coming out here." It wasn't worth while to explain to him that I did not look at it in that light. He would have made himself unpleasant in some way to old Clibborn, no doubt.'

'I am sure he would,' assented' Walter. 'I wonder Deering hasn't got on better; he's the sort of man that ought to get on, if there's any good in pushing and self-assertion.'

'I fancy the vagabond strain in him neutralises those undeniably useful qualities.'

Then they talked of the probable value of their nugget; of when the next opportunity of conveying gold to the station under safe escort would be likely to occur; and of when they might hope to receive letters from England. It was now a long time since any communication from home had reached them, and Walter was getting very impatient. He did not even know where Florence was. When he had last heard from her, she was at Naples, where Mr and Mrs St Quentin meant to remain for the winter and the early spring, and from thence she expected they would return to England. Her letter was written only a short time before that of Mrs Ritchie had come to create an entire change in her life, actual and prospective. They referred to its contents, and to Florence's mentioning that Miriam was sitting for her portrait to a famous painter at Naples.

'She is very handsome, is she not?' asked Daly. 'Yes; I think so. Her features are not very regular, and she has not much colour, people say; but I think her face lovely-the expression is so bright and fearless; and her eyes are splendid! Large golden eyes. Can you imagine an eagle's eyes, with all the brightness left in them, and a great deal of exquisite softness added, on occasion?' 'It is not an easy effort of imagination, but I think I can. That is just the kind of beauty I have imagined sometimes, but I never really saw it. But, Walter, a woman like your sister must have married a rich man; she never could have been happy in an obscure position.'

No,' said Walter carelessly; 'I suppose not. At all events, she has done it, and there's no good in grumbling.'

How delighted she will be to welcome you to her home! Where is St Quentin's place?'

'I don't know that he has one. Neither Miriam nor Florence has said anything about it; and as to her welcoming me, that must depend in a great measure on my venerable brother-in-law. I have rather a curiosity to see the old fellow. I daresay he is not a bad sort, if he were not Miriam's husband.'

'There you go again! One would think you were her mother, Walter, you are so hard to please. You have just said, very sensibly, that, as the deed was done, there was no use in grumbling, and there you are, grumbling again.'

'I beg your pardon, old fellow,' said Walter, with his usual gay good-humour, for bothering you with my guesses and forebodings about the fate of a woman whom you never saw, and perhaps never will see, though I hope you will. I have been boring you horribly all this time.'

'Indeed, you have not, Walter. Everything that interests you interests me also, and I have the utmost curiosity to see Mrs St Quentin; moreover, I am not at all inclined to doubt that it is much better for my peace of mind that I shall see her first, if I see her at all, as Mrs St Quentin. How very white and tired you are looking!'

'I am tired. I think I will turn in for a good night's rest, and so get rid of my headache.'

Nothing was said between the two of the care, as tender, and the watching as vigilant, as any which a woman might have bestowed, which Walter had lavished on Daly; but between these two men words were not needed. Their hearts were knit together in one of those friendships which have the gravity, dignity, and simplicity of the higher class of male character, united with the partial affection which women feel for one another. It had grown out of a casual association into one of the most enduring ties which human feeling can create, and it was wholly uninjured by the great superiority of Lawrence to Walter.

Just before they parted for the night, Daly said: 'I don't exactly understand where it is you have hidden our nugget, Walter. You must shew me the spot to-morrow.'

'I made an exact memorandum of it in my pocket-book, like the man in Edgar Poe's story; only it's not in cipher. And I don't mean that any one else shall read it. Nothing like being business-like, you know. But as to shewing it to you to-morrow, it is out of the question. It's a good way up the ravine, and a steepish climb to get within sight of it. Don't flatter yourself you could do the distance, or anything like it even on the level, as yet. Deering cautioned me about your tendency to imagine yourself too well, and tire yourself."

The solemn beauty of the night was at its deepest and grandest, and the isolated hut itself was hardly more tranquil than the clustered dwellings lower down in the valley. A great hush had fallen on all the striving and labour of the place; and the murmur of the streamlets, inaudible by day, save at the falls, might be heard, under the awful height of the sky. The great rifts in the rocks, the ditches, the dams, all the appliances of the search in which the population of the great valley worked their bodies and strained their minds to the utmost, looked like deserted ruins, gaunt and ugly, and desolate in the midst of nature's vastness and majesty.

If the solitary hut had had less rude and prosaic

surroundings, it might have been accounted picturesque; but as it was, it was only solitary and grim. Walter Clint was not destined to the good night's rest which was to cure his headache. There was a strange restlessness upon him, against which his resolution to sleep was powerless, and which set all his efforts to control his mind, and force it into pleasant tracks of thought, at defiance. Why could he not think of home, and Florence, of the success which had come to him and Daly, and the possibilities which that success opened up for his future? Why did all these subjects of reflection seem unreal, wavering, dreamlike, and all sorts of trivialities-quaint sayings of Spoiled Five, scraps of miners' gossip, the colour of Deering's neck-tie, little bits out of books he had read long ago, rhymes which he and Miriam had made when they were children, the face and voice of a lecturer whom he had heard at one of the medical schools in London, innumerable trifling occurrences of yesterday, of last year, of ten years ago-why did these things come into his aching head in crowds, rushing and tumbling over each other? If they would even have come one by one, so that he might think of each separately, only for the instant of time which it would require, and get rid of it! But there was no such relief. All these crowding ideas were worthless, silly, teasing; but he could no more separate, disperse, rid himself of them, than he could govern the movements of the insects which filled the dazzling air in the golden evenings. They wearied him inexpressibly, but he was powerless under their swarming attacks. The hiding of the nugget. He would think of that! He was determined to think of that. That was a fact; he had done it; he could not exactly, or indeed at all, remember why, but he had done it, and of course he could think of it, could recall every little incident of his task. No; he could not. When he tried to retrace in his fancy the path by which he had ascended the ravine, he found himself a young boy again, running along by the hedge which bordered the road leading from the Firs to Mr Martin's house at Drington. Here was Mr Martin, feeling his pulse, desiring him to put out his tongue, promising him jam with his physic. Very odd. A little while ago, he was a long way off, with a man whose name he ought to know, but could not remember, in a distant country, where were great mountains, and a pitiless desert, broad rivers, and herds of strange beasts, rough men, and a train of wagons. He had been riding among them only a minute ago, before he was working at the sluice out there. Out where? How could there be a sluice, and miners' tools, a locker, and a man with red hair and a red beard, in the little garden before the cottage in George Lane, where Mrs Reeve was lying dead? He must get up, and see about this; he could not permit it. The captain of the ship would not allow of such encumbrance; how came those things on the deck? He must turn out-it was his watch!

How was this! He was on land, not in a ship, but striving to burst open a locked and barred door, but whether he was wildly anxious to get in or out of the place which the door defended, he was not sure, he only knew that there was urgent need of him at the other side of those locks and bars; he struggled with all his strength, and, it seemed to him, with the strength of many others beside himself, to wrench them open, for there were whispering voices

calling to him, and stealthy steps creeping up to him, and now he must flee. And the locks and bars! Stay; he had the secret of them: they were old acquaintances of his; he had slid through them many a time when he was a boy. Why, he was a boy now, and he must get out of the house noiselessly, to escape from his father. The bolt is slipped, the key is turned, and Walter stands on the stony plateau, the huge rock frowning blackly before him, and the awful steel vault of the sky, a million miles, it seems to him, above him. To be sure, it is up there he wants to go: he knows all about it now; that was what was whispered of close to him; and he rushes out with a shout, and flings his arms up, as though they were wings, and he were trying them, but is tripped up, and brought down, prone upon his hands and face, by something which lies in the deep shadow. He utters no sound, but clutches at this substance, and lies, partly beside, partly over it, shuddering, until, in another minute, Lawrence is on the spot, and investigating that heap, by the light of the steel vault and the stars. Besides Walter, it consists of a dead dog and a dead man: of Sambo, dexterously choked by a loop at the end of a long line; and of Spoiled Five, whose skull is shattered, probably by the butt-end of a Derringer.

SPRING SONG.

BLOW, Spring, upon the lap of earth,
And draw the winter from the hills;
Oh, draw men from a thousand ills,
And touch their sadness into mirth.
Blow through the woods, and wake again
New leafage on the naked trees,
That creak and chatter to the breeze
Which hurries from the northern main.

Blow cross the wolds, and down the straths
Where old melodious rivers flow,
And shadows play, and lilies grow,
And mosses creep about the paths.
Blow round about the garden bower,
Where clinging rose and jasmine stray,
And where the liquid forces play
That roll the bud and spread the flower.
Blow o'er the hills and lakes and plains,
And stir them with thy quickening life,
Till Nature feels the generous strife
Of being working in her veins.

Blow through the haunts of sin and death,
Where festering vices thickly breed;
Blow unto men a better creed,

And sift them with thy winnowing breath.

The Publishers of CHAMBERS's JOURNAL beg to direct the attention of CONTRIBUTORS to the following notice: 1st. All communications should be addressed to the 'Editor, 47 Paternoster Row, London.'

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Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers.

BUSES AND BUS MEN.

I OUGHT to know something about buses and busmen, for I have been on the journey ever since I was the height of your walking-stick. When I was a little chap, I used to sleep among the parcels in the boot of a Paddington and City stage-coach. That was long before the buses came up. There used to be stage-coaches on all the main lines that are now worked by the buses. They were just like the old country stage-coach-they were mostly, in fact, old country stage-coaches-only, they had but a pair of horses instead of four. There is an old pattern stage-coach on the stones to this day; it comes in from Brixton Hill, and you may see it crossing London Bridge any morning. The coaches used to carry six inside and twelve outside, and the fare was sixpence between Paddington and the City. They had no conductors: the coachman managed everything along with his parcel-boy. The parcel-traffic, which used to be worth something, was a perquisite of the coachman, and he had a boy to manage it that he paid himself: eighteen-pence a week was about the figure. The boy rode in the boot along with the parcels; and sometimes he was paid by a share of the parcelprofits. The coaches were owned by private people-publicans, stable-keepers, and the like; the largest owner was a Mrs Wilson, whose family owned the Favorite' buses, till they were taken over by the Company. Their pace wasn't very lively; you see the roads were not so good as now, and the competition wasn't very keen. About four and a half miles an hour was about the pace, and the coaches used to stop an hour at each end of the journeys. The great head-quarters for the Paddington stage-coaches were at the Yorkshire Stingo; and most of the West-end coaches in these days used to stop in St Paul's Churchyard, instead of going down Cheapside to the Bank. They were well patronised, the old coaches, and several fine fortunes have been made out of them.

I remember well the first buses that came out in London. It was in August 1829-the same year that the Peelers, as the new police were called,

PRICE 1d.

first came up. Shillibeer was the first bus-proprietor. He had been over in Paris, it seems, looking how they worked there, and he came back and took out a patent for them, or registered them, or something of that kind, in this country. The first buses ran between Paddington and the Bank, one bus going by the New Road, past the Angel, and down the City Road; the next along Oxford Street and Holborn; and so on alternately. They had three horses abreast, like the 'Red' Favorites you see now; but they were not red; in fact, they looked more like hearses than buses. They had no lettering on their sides or ends, and there was only one glass panel on either side, all the others being blank. The driver sat in the centre, just as he does now. The first conductors wore a sort of uniform of a round jacket, and cloth caps hanging over one side, like the caps some of them Belgian volunteers wear that come over every year to the Wimbledon shooting-matches. There was no perch, as there is now, for the conductor; where the perch now is was a little seat, with a high iron rail at the back side, and there the conductor used to sit. But it was found that fellows often went to sleep, and another thing was, that a good look-out all round for passengers could not be had; so the seat was done away with, and the perch substituted. In the early days there was no knife-board; no passengers were carried outside at all, except four on the box-seat beside the driver. Even the conductor was liable in a penalty if seen on the roof. At first, the enforcement of the regulations as to traffic did not rest with the street police; but that sort of business was done by informers, who made a regular trade of it, laying their information before the magistrates, and getting half the penalty if they secured a conviction. The penalties used to run pretty stiff, sometimes as high as five pounds; and the commonest offences were over-crowding, sitting on the roof, and hard driving. I know one of the old breed of informers alive, now living retired on his money he used to keep a regular staff of men for the business, and throve on it well. That is all changed now, and for the better, although the police every now and then do take fits of summoning

chaps right and left. The duty was pretty smart on buses in the times I am speaking of. It began at threepence-halfpenny per mile, and gradually fell to a penny, till two or three years ago the mileage rate was done away with altogether, and every bus licensed now pays two pounds as duty. I believe the revenue folks took Shillibeer into Somerset House, and found a billet there for him, because of the extent to which he had increased the revenue. The early buses were slower than the present, and didn't travel so many journeys; the Paddington ones, for instance, made only three journeys in the day instead of five: very soon-as quick as buses could be made, in fact-the coaches vanished off one line after another, till by the year '33 there was hardly an old coach to be seen. And then new lines were started, and opposition gone in for on the established lines; for trade was very keen in the old days, when there were no railways or tramways. I think there never were so many buses running in London as at the time of the first Exhibition in 1851; though perhaps there were close on as many during the second. The railways began to tell on them, however; no sooner was a new line opened than the bus-traffic suffered heavily. Perhaps there is hardly a bus-line in all London that has not had some of its vehicles knocked off within the last few years. The Metropolitan Railway pretty well did for the Old 'Express' buses, that used to run down Oxford Street to the Bank in the morning with cargoes of City men. Twenty minutes from Oxford Circus to the Bank was the time allowed, and it was wonderful how it was kept. Later in the day, such a speed as that would have been impossible. Express buses from the West End to the City have lately come up again, but on another and a clear line. Three Express Westminsters' run by the Embankment and Queen Victoria Street every morning, and as they have pretty well the whole track to themselves, they make good time of it. There is a four-horse Express bus on the south side; it runs from Tulse Hill every morning to the Bank, and goes along, once it is clear of the stones, in the style of the old spanking days. I could tell you about the penny 'Shakspeares' and other cheap buses, some of which went down for want of traffic, others for want of capital to keep them going till the traffic that there was had time to take to them. I think myself it would both pay and draw custom if every road were blocked into penny rides. Look what a short-distance traffic the trams have picked up already! It's not the all-the-way' passenger's sixpence that pays for the journey, but the quick succession of short-distance' smaller sums. For suburban traffic, the times look altogether bad for the buses. At the start, they have mostly a railway to compete against, and on the journey the bells of the tram-horses are tinkling front and rear of them. It will come to this in time, I expect, that we shall have trams along every main road, as near the dense centres as the trams will be allowed to come-it would be a great mistake to permit them into the crowded main streets-and we shall have buses starting where they stop, and making short connecting journeys inside what I may call the inner circle. Look what a good thing the Waterloo halfpenny bus-service has turned out! I call it a halfpenny service, although you pay a penny, because, if you crossed the bridge on foot, the tollman would take a halfpenny from you; so

6

the ride from the Strand to the South-western Railway only costs you a halfpenny. Suppose there was a penny line from Broad Street to the Post-office, don't you think it would pay; or another from Whitechapel, where the tram ends, to the Bank; or another from the Finsbury_pavement end of the tram over to the London Bridge Station; or another from the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge to Charing Cross, or the bottom of the Haymarket? I wish I had the capital to try the spec., that's all; I wouldn't be trimming lamps in a cellar this blessed afternoon, that I tell you. I could tell you a heap of stories about the competition between 'the Company' and the private owners before the Company got nearly the full possession of the town; but if I once began, I would not know how to stop. I may tell you this, though, that no private bus was ever run fairly off the road by the Company. When the private owner meant to keep his ground, he did keep it, and does to this day; when you have seen him disappear, after what has looked like a spell of hot competition and hard struggling, it was all 'kid' on his part to force better terms of purchase, for he meant to sell from the very beginning.

When the buses first came up, the conductors used to have twenty-one shillings a week as wages, and eighteenpence a day for food besides a shilling for dinner, and sixpence for tea. The drivers had just the same. When the competition got keen, the pay of the driver was altered to fourteen shillings a week, and the fare of one throughpassenger-a 'boxer,' as he was called-each way, which was better than the higher regular wage. The conductor got no increase; it was taken for granted that he looked to himself. You see, if the Company can make a living off it now, with the rails and the trams competing with it, times must have been ever so much better for the bus interests before these competitors came up; and seeing that times were 'good, and the money coming in, the old masters winked a bit at the taxation' which they knew went on, if it wasn't too barefaced. Now, a day's work will hardly stand taxing,' and the game has been carried so far that the Company keep their inspectors and spies continually on the move, and there are lots of checks and precautions of all kinds. It has been greatly put down, but a good bit is still done on the extreme quiet-take my word for it. The fact is, the temptation is strong, uncommon strong. I don't mean to say a man is bound to give way to it. A driver's wages now stand at forty-two shillings a week; a conductor has twenty-eight shillings, and neither have any perquisites. The driver is not so badly paid, although there are some deductions from his money before he takes it home; but the conductor on twentyeight shillings is greatly underpaid, when you look at his hours and his work. He averages sixteen hours a day; he is out in all weathers; he never gets a chance to sit down, but hops from one perch to another, like a canary in a cage; his attention must never flag; he is always bound to be civil, and his temper is often sorely tried; he has to keep his accounts as the bus is moving; and he never gets a chance of a regular meal. It is a lucky day for him and the driver if they get ten minutes between journeys to swallow a morsel of dinner; more often they have only five, and no longer time for their tea. The old stage-coachmen mostly took to the buses, but I don't know that