to a cat, as Tom is now. Chaucer (Romance of the Rose) translates Thibert le Cas by Gibbe our cat.* The Rev. S. Lysons, in a work called The Model Merchant of the Middle Ages, published in 1860, gives a considerable number of facts to shew that the story of Whittington and his Cat is not a myth. Several facts in his account of the matter seem indisputable. At the age of twenty-five, Richard (son of William de Whityngdon, lord of the manor of Paunt by Gloucestershire, and born 1361) was so rich as to be able to lend Philip Mansell, his maternal uncle by half-blood, five hundred pounds (five thousand pounds in those days). It is quite certain that he married his master's daughter, Alice Fitzwarren, and became thrice lord mayor of London, namely, in 1397, 1406, and 1419. On one occasion he lent one thousand pounds (or ten thousand pounds of our currency) to Henry IV. His profits as a London mercer must have been very lucrative. With Richard Harweden, he rebuilt the nave of Westminster Abbey in 1415, and at his sole cost built and endowed St Michael Paternoster, the Guildhall chapel, and gave as much as four thousand pounds of our money towards supplying the library of the Grayfriars' Monastery in Newgate Street with books. The cat story does not, however, rest on so sure a foundation. Mr Keightley thinks that in 1375, when the celebrated voyage is supposed to have been made, the west coast of Africa was nearly as unknown to Europe as America. Mr Lysons replies, that in 1344 (thirtyone years before the cat theory), according to Hackluyt, Macham, an Englishman, discovered the island of Madeira, off the west coast of Africa, and sailed along the coast of Morocco; and upon his information many adventurers went out. Travellers have mentioned the enormous amount of rats, and the scarcity of cats, in West Africa. The Machams, or Machins, appear to be an old Gloucestershire family, still resident in the county, some now living on the property which in the medieval period belonged to the Fitzwarrens. As Mr Lysons remarks, it would be interesting to trace whether Hugh Fitzwarren sent his venture out on hearing of his neighbour's discovery. On August 16, 1862, Mr Lysons was able to add a remarkable confirmation of his theory. On that date he communicated to Notes and Queries the discovery of a sculptured stone in basso-relievo in Westgate Street, Gloucester, representing young Whittington with his cat in his

arms.

An ancient rent-roll in the possession of the corporation of Gloucester (c. 1460) supplies the information that the house (in the foundation of which the relic was discovered) belonged to the great-nephew of the Lord Mayor Whittington. Two able archæologists, Messrs Franks and Albert Way, saw the stone at the Worcester congress of the Archæological Institute, and pronounced it of the fifteenth century. This discovery,' says Mr Lysons, 'must, I think, set at rest for ever all question on the subject of the cat; but if sceptics will still contend that "there was no part of the known world to which a cat could be sent to realise a sum

The game cat's-cradle has nothing to do with the cat, but is so called, according to Nares, from cratche, an ancient word for a manger, and was cratch-cradle, the manger which held the holy child. In Wicliffe's version of the Bible, c. 1380 (St Luke, ii. 7), we have: 'And sche bare hir first borun sone, and wlappid hym in clothis; and leide hym in a cracche.' The Genoa version

of 1557 has cretche.

sufficient to lay the foundation of any person's fortune," let me refer them to the state of things in Morocco, even down to 1780, as described in Lempriere's Tour to Morocco, in Pinkerton's Voyages (xv. 736), where it is related as "a singular circumstance, that in the immediate vicinity of Morocco, for some distance round the city, the ground is totally occupied by a great number of rats, of a larger species than any I had before seen, which burrow underground like rabbits, and allow strangers to approach very near before they retire to their holes.". It is curious that Pennant, speaking of the rebuilding of Newgate by Whittington's executors, says his statue, with the cat, remained in a niche to its final demolition on the rebuilding of the present prison.'*

We turn to Brand's Popular Antiquities for the folk-lore of cats. Melton, in his Astrologaster, says: "When the cat washes her face over her eares, we shall have great store of raine.' The sneezing of a cat was considered a lucky omen to a bride who was to be married the next day. In Willsford's Nature Secrets, cats coveting the fire more than ordinary, or licking their feet and trimming the hair of their heads and mustachios, presages rainy weather.' In the Statistical Account of Scotland it is stated that if a cat was permitted to leap over a corpse, it portended misfortune.

The tribe Felida comprise cats, lions, tigers, leopards, and lynxes. The skeleton of a cat is nearly a miniature representation of that of a tiger or lion. The ethmoid bone is very compli cated in the cat, and the senses of smelling and hearing very acute. But it is quite unnecessary for us to describe the peculiarities and attributes of the cat; we must content ourselves by noting some of its varieties. The Angora cat is a very beautiful object, with fine silvery hair.

The Persian cat is often more silky in appear ance than the Angora, though the colour is different, being gray. Pure white Persians, with blue eyes, are most beautiful animals; but, strange to say, they are always deaf. Those exhibited at the recent Cat Show at the Crystal Palace had this peculiarity. Some years ago, there was a white Persian cat at Allesbury Rectory, near Coventry, quite deaf. Of her many kittens, those quite white were always deaf, but those with the least colour could hear well. The Isle of Man produces the tailless cat, a very curious variety. When these are crossed with an ordinary tailed cat, the progeny exhibits the intermediate stages between tail and no tail.

A tortoise-shell Tom cat is extremely rare. Mr Broderip, writing in 1847, says: A friend, not less noted for his scientific labours than his fund

and Parrot was in 1612 the sign of Thomas Paner, a bookThe Cat was often used in London signs. The Cat seller near the Royal Exchange. We have also the Cat and Cage, and Cat and Lion. Some say the Cat and Fiddle may have originated with the sign of a certain Caton fidèle, a stanch Protestant in the reign of Queen Mary. Mr Hotten points out that if so, it must have lost its appellation very soon, for as early as 1589 we find 'Henry Carr, sign of the Catte and Fidle in the Old Chaunge.' The Catherine Wheel sign, put up sometimes in honour of Catherine of Aragon, queen of Henry VIII., was by the Puritans changed into the Cat and Wheel. The Catherine Wheel was a common sign in the medieval period, being adopted from its being the badge of the order of the knights of St Catherine of Mount Sinai. (Hotten's History of Signboards.)

so much, that they are quite satisfied with any arrangement, however it may savour of favouritism, which removes the task of waiting upon him, in some degree, off them, and puts it on me. The last time he was confined to the house for three days of course, after a bout of solitary drinking, which he said was gout-I answered his bell, as if by accident, and told Mrs Ritchie I thought there was no other servant about; and that I had no objection to do so habitually when I was in your room, and therefore close to his. The result is, I attend on him constantly, and since then he has been better, and I have been requested to resume my piano-playing in the evenings-which puzzles the servants, I can see; but Mrs Ritchie condescends to approve, and that is all the backing I require. He is more morose than ever. Mr and Mrs Cooke have honestly kept the promise they made you, and called on him several times; but he invariably refuses to see them, on the plea that he is not well, and he literally sees no one but Mr Martin and Mr Standish.

I met Mrs Cooke in the village one day last week, as I was turning away from the post-office after posting a letter to Walter, and she stopped to speak to me. You have always told me she is a very nice woman, and I trust your judgment and your taste implicitly; but I must confess I do not like her. There are times when not all the effort I can make enables me to retain the mental attitude of my position towards others, and I am quite conscious that, in judging Mrs Cooke, I did not distinctly remember that I was Mrs St Quentin's maid, being spoken to by the wife of the rector of the parish, and I made her short and indifferent answers. I did not think her manner pleasant, and the way in which she looked at me was decidedly not so-it was almost suspicious, and, if I might say so, impertinent. She was curious to know whether your father corresponded directly with you, and quite unnecessarily emphatic in expressing her opinion that Mrs St Quentin ought to be informed of the extreme seclusion in which her father lived, and how very undesirable his friends considered it. Bless the woman! One would have thought, to hear her, that I was keeping your father shut up, for some purpose of my own, and that she wanted to make me understand that I was found out. At all events, she did not impress me agreeably, and I gave her no information, and, I suspect, as little satisfaction.

My life is very monotonous, but I like it, like it better than any other kind of life, while Walter is absent; and I know I am useful to your father. I think, sometimes, he drinks less-has less time, in fact, in which to drink. He is never violent with me, but sometimes doggedly sullen, so that I know not whether I have offended him or what is the matter with him. His looks are very much changed. Dear Miriam, I am a bad hand at description, but I must tell you that his hair is thinner and more gray, and it looks lank and damp. His face is red, and yet pale; there is a livid hue about it very often, like a thin ashen shade over the bloodred flesh; and his lips are loose, blue, and seldom quite still. He never walks without his stick now, and leans heavily on it, but with an unsteady hand, the veins and fingers of which are thickened and coarse. His eyes are sometimes bloodshot, and generally dim, except when he is angry about anything, then they can glare still; and his voice

is uncertain and weaker. When he is shaking off the effect of a real fit of drinking, he is as hoarse as a raven. He takes some pains to conceal the quantity he drinks. He keeps the key of the wine-cellar as religiously as usual, and puts in the empty bottles out of sight as far as he can. Mr Martin says he never knew the desire for concealment, which he calls 'a remnant of decency,' to last so long, in the case of a man addicted to this vice, and he instructs me to let him suppose me to be ignorant of the truth as long as possible. I shall be all the more useful to him, Mr Martin says, when concealment ceases to be practicable, if he can, up to that time, preserve the figment of self-respect; and besides this, there is a kind of restraint in it; it is not much, but it is something.

He had a dreadful attack last week, but I did not see him in it. No one did, except Mr Martin and Robert. It did not last long; and Mr Martin said it would have frightened me uselessly, and probably led, had Mr Clint discovered my knowledge of it, to his dismissing me from the house. Fancy if Mr Martin could have surmised the weight and meaning of such a probability to me! He was in the most abject fear, they told me, they could not make out of what, and clung to them, with the most heartrending entreaties that they would not leave him, until they succeeded in stupefying him. Then, the waking! the appalling lassitude and misery, and the manifest decrease of strength since the attack. Miriam, I feel convinced he is dying, not by such slow degrees as Mr Martin prepared me for at all, and that there is nothing to hope for except a briefer period of a less kind of suffering.

I considered all you said to me maturely, and being quite satisfied that I might safely trust my nerves and my countenance, I endeavoured to find out whether Mr Martin knew anything of the object of your father's inquiries at Tredegar Terrace.

I told him my mistress had avowed to me that she feared something had occurred still further to embitter the mutual feelings of her father and her brother, but that, unless Mr Martin was aware of the circumstance, she had no means of ascertaining whether her conjecture was correct. Mr Martin replied: "I suppose I may tell you anything which I would tell Mrs St Quentin ?'

'I am entirely in her confidence in this matter,' I said.

'Well, then,' continued Mr Martin, she had better know the truth. Mr Clint has told me all about it. His son such a nice fellow, Mrs Dixon; if he only had a little more sense, and a little less complaisance-fell in love with the daughter of the person in whose house he lodged in London; and after her mother's death, this young lady went out as governess to some family which she left under peculiar circumstances. I never believe one woman's account of another, as I told Mr Clint, when he told me that the woman whose brats the poor girl taught said she was "indeed a dangerous inmate;" which meant, no doubt, that Miss Reeve was an attractive creature, and the lady herself, a Mrs Clewer, was an elderly catamaran; and Í daresay Miss Reeve was all right. The thing came to Mr Clint's knowledge in an odd sort of way. A letter addressed in a common hand, like a shopman's or a servant's, was sent to the Firs, directed to W. Clint, Esq., and opened by Mr Clint. It

contained a letter, written, in the most loverlike terms, to Miss Reeve' [Miriam, I did keep my countenance, I assure you I did], 'signed with Walter's name, and addressed to Miss Reeve, at Mrs Clewer's. There was a second letter, from that no doubt estimable person, in which she informed the poor girl that the letter had been found at the back of a drawer in the room formerly occupied by her, and that she, Mrs Clewer, in restoring it to her, felt it her duty, as a mother and a decided Christian, to point out to her the error of her ways, and to inform her that it would be out of her power, should she ever apply to her for a recommendation, to give her one. The lady added, that she presumed the best way to make sure of the letter reaching its owner, and to make her aware that she was detected, was to send it to the deluded young man whom she had evidently led astray from the paths of duty and wisdom. Accordingly, Mrs Clewer had forwarded the whole budget to Mr Walter Clint, at his lodgings at Tredegar Terrace; and the servant there, who, it seems, knew his father's address, but had lost sight of him for some time, redirected the letter to the Fire. Mr Clint immediately wrote to Mrs Clewer for information respecting Miss Reeve, and received in return one of those exquisitely malicious, piously foreboding, effusively vague letters characteristic of women of a certain class of mind when they are puffed up with the fond notion of being of some importance, and see their way to a safe indulgence in spite. This occurred some time before Miss Clint's marriage; and Mr Clint went up to London with his mind full of it, and returned brooding over it, I am convinced, together with all the rest of Walter's misdemeanours, real and imaginary. It is only within the last week he has told me about it.'

out.

'And what did you say?' I contrived to stammer

'That it was all rubbish; that Walter had naturally, and no doubt honourably, admired a pretty girl, whom he had met under very provocative circumstances; and that Mrs Clewer was an unamiable spiteful woman, whose ostentatious ignorance of "what had become of Miss Reeve," was the exact result of her own conduct to her-depend on it, the woman who wrote that letter after she had left her, treated her ill while she staid-and that it was a boyish folly, without anything disgraceful about it. He had an absurd notion that Walter might have married this poor girl, but I

reasoned him out of that.'

'How did you manage that, sir?' I asked. 'Well, indeed, without much difficulty. I had only to represent to him that no one knew what Walter's circumstances were better than he did; he was perfectly aware that he had not given his son the means of keeping a wife, and that as a fact, his son had no wife, but had gone out with a male companion to the gold-diggings. I think no argument could be simpler or more conclusive than that?'

I assented. Dearest Miriam, imagine how I was longing to get away from him! You may tell Mrs St Quentin all this, as, I suppose, she knows what I said on your arrival; and tell her she need not be uneasy; there is absolutely nothing in it.' Imagine my reflections, though I cannot be identified with this calumniated Florence Reeve! Conceive what Walter would feel if he knew of

Mrs Clewer's letter! Do you wonder that I sometimes feel the restraining bands of time and space almost insufferable, as if I must, by a mighty effort of my spirit, burst them, and be free-free to join him, to see him! But weary weeks and months must wear themselves away before the seal is taken off my lips.

You draw a picture of me, dearest Miriam, as much too flattering, as your picture of yourself is false to the reality. I did laugh, I confess, at your story about the note from the dressmaker; but would it not be better to face this craze of Mr St Quentin's openly, and thus shame him, or reason him out of it? Of course you are very careful to give evil tongues no chance of maligning you. If he is known to be a jealous man, your conduct will be very closely scrutinised. It seems to me that I have grown wonderfully wise of late. Lawrence Daly used to say that nothing would ever teach me the ways of the world; but I am learning them-that letter of Mrs Clewer's was a whole class-book to me.

I shall be anxious until I hear from you again. Don't vex Mr St Quentin too much about Count Scalchi. I wish he would come to England, buy the 'place' he talked about when he first came, and that you would settle down.' I know you cannot bear the word, but I have a notion, dear Miriam, after all the knocking about you have had, you would find the thing very tolerable. I have no home news for you. The place looks neglected and melancholy. Your father, though he goes out every day that he is up, in all weathers, hardly ever enters the garden, and seems to care nothing about it. The path on the border of the fir plantation is his invariable promenade; there he walks, slowly and alone, by the hour together. would read, it would be a resource for him, but he never reads, not even the newspaper now, I think. I. must conclude now. Write soon again.-Your affectionate sister, FLORENCE CLINT.

If he

While Florence was occupied in writing this letter, Mr Clint was walking, in the listless, depressed, desultory way which had become habitual to him, up and down the path on the edge of the fir-wood. He looked ill, feeble, and angry. Muttered exclamations of impatience escaped him from time to time, and he shook his stout stick with something of the gesture which, a couple of years before, made a stick, in the hand of Reginald Clint when he was in a passion, an unpleasantly suggestive weapon.

"What the devil is keeping the man?' he would mutter. Not business-he cannot put me off on that pretence.'

Presently, the individual he was by this time wildly objurgating, appeared. Robert was conducting him towards the fir-wood, when Mr Clint stood still, and shouted at them:

'That will do, you fool. Do you suppose he does not know a road when it lies before him, or me when he sees me? Go back, and mind your business.-Soh! you've come at last, Standish, have you? I have expected you this hour.'

'I could not come sooner,' replied Mr Standish-a tall, thin, self-possessed man, who took Mr Clint's impatient spleen very quietly-as he joined him. 'Do you mean to discuss the important business, on which you tell me you wish to consult me, here?'

'I do,' replied Mr Clint shortly. 'Just give me your arm, will you?'

The other presented his arm, without much alacrity; and Mr Clint, shifting his stick to the left hand, leaned closely upon it, as he turned into the walk, and pursued it in the direction leading away from the house, talking low and earnestly to his companion. That gentleman did not pay any remarkable attention to his words at first, but after awhile, he began to listen with marked, even startled interest, and, with bent brows and keenly searching eyes, to question the speaker closely. Now, Mr Standish was a lawyer.

CHAPTER XXIV.-FRIENDLY OFFICES.

Life within the gates at the Firs went on very quietly, to outward appearance, and was so full of anxiety to Florence, that her mind, with the one great exception of its straying over the sea to Walter, was concentrated upon it. She knew nothing; she cared nothing about what went on without. But the moroseness and the exclusiveness of Reginald Clint had not banished the influence of gossip among the inmates of his house and their village acquaintances. They had, perhaps, rather intensified the need for the loosing of tongues in every direction in which either information or surmise could be distributed; and the master of the Firs would have been astonished if he could have known how much people who, he would have positively declared, knew nothing at all about him, contrived to say.

That Mr Clint was a bad father, had been a bad husband, and was not likely ever to be anything but a bad man, were facts so well known and frequently discussed in the neighbourhood, that they had quite lost the charm of novelty; but an entirely fresh impetus had been given of late to the gossip of the place, and its motive power was poor unconscious Florence. She went on her way, fulfilling her appointed task, which was becoming day by day more difficult and painful, and she was furnishing an inexhaustible theme of surmise, suspicion, and detraction, to a number of people of whose existence she was hardly aware.

The falseness of her position, though, in one of its aspects, never absent from her mind, in others never occurred to Florence. So intent was she upon the one purpose of her life, that she did not perceive the surrounding facts and impressions, and she failed to remark the manifest silence and restraint of the servants towards her, because they were just what she wished for, and by freeing her from a constant necessity for acting, left her all the more time for thought and the furtherance of her project. She did once or twice notice that Mrs Ritchie spoke sharply to her, and that she was never asked to join her on any of the occasions which had been impossible to avoid, and which had taxed her gentle patience so severely; but she merely noticed these things, they made no impression on her.

In the meantime, a very pretty little commotion was in progress in the village, and even for some distance outside it, and before very long Mr Martin became aware of it, and of its origin. The indignant public had convinced itself that Mr Clint, for whom no esteem or compassion had ever before been felt, was in danger of falling a victim to the arts and fascinations of his daughter's confidential

maid, and that Mrs St Quentin, owing to her injudicious selection of a young and pretty woman to fill the place she herself ought to have occupied, was not unlikely to find herself accommodated with a stepmother. It was just the sort of thing a man like Mr Clint, who had excluded himself from society, would be likely to do; in short, there were many people who asked, with Susan, whether Mrs St Quentin thought there was only one old fool in the world, when she had made sure of her husband? This question had suggested itself, in the first instance, through the instrumentality of Susan, who, without feeling any positive dislike of Mrs Dixon, had an uneasy jealousy and suspicion of her, which, of course, originated in her unacknowledged intuitive consciousness of that young person's superiority. She had no deliberate intention of slander, or even of ill-nature, in the first whispers which she set abroad, subsequent to her discovery of Mrs Dixon at the piano in the drawing-room; but the suggestion that Mrs St Quentin's maid was playing a nice little game of her own,' found such popular favour, that Susan could by no means resist multiplying her observations, and detailing their results with considerable exaggeration. The perfect quiet of life at the Firs, and the seclusion of it, were dangerous in the sense that they threw Florence off her guard-that she appeared, as she was, a refined and high-minded young lady, and by degrees ceased to remember the technicalities to which she had trained herself for the maintenance of her assumed position. This told seriously in support of the theory of her designs upon Mr Clint; for whereas she was unconsciously resuming the externals of her real station, she was supposed to be practising for the station to which she nefariously aspired.

It would be difficult, in any case, to trace the progress of a rumour originating in one class of society, to the knowledge of another, and its adoption by that other. In this particular instance it would be impossible. Mrs Cooke tried to trace it, but she failed; it had passed through so many channels before it reached her, through the medium of the village school-mistress, a few days before that on which she had met Florence in the village, and produced so unpleasing an effect on her. Circumstances were against Florence, it must be confessed, since the way of the world is to take a bad motive for granted, but never to recognise a generous one, except under the pressure of overwhelming proof; and Mrs Cooke, a sensible woman, and not in the least ill-natured, felt some concern for her friend Miriam. There was another point of view, to be sure-whether any woman, with a good character and a decent education, would not be so much too good for Mr Clint as to be fairly held to have purchased the worldly advantages involved in becoming his wife at a very high price indeed; but Mrs Cooke could hardly be expected to consider the matter in that aspect. Class prejudices have such tremendous power over women, that it would be almost impossible to the most reasonable among them to discern that marrying a 'gentleman' might be not only a condescension and a sacrifice, but an actual degradation on the part of a 'servant.'

As it was, Mrs Cooke felt much indignation with Mrs Dixon, contempt for Mr Clint, compassion for Miriam, and indecision as regarded herself. She had forgotten her husband's intuitive incredulity