'Simon Ryan, I come to give thee glory. Thy light has shone in upon my heart. Behold me! I have renounced the perversions of the tent maker. I am of Peter; not of Paul, neither of Apollos!'

A few months after this Mr. Ryan's privacy was again invaded; Harry Clarke appeared with another gentleman, a representative of the bankers with whom his account was kept. Some heavy cheques had been drawn on the account, beginning at 201., and followed by several for larger sums in rapid succession. At last a cheque for 1,000l. was presented by a tall man dressed as a Quaker. Payment was refused and the cheque detained.

Harry Clarke on being referred to, unhesitatingly pronounced the signature a forgery. Ryan's wrath fell upon Harry Clarke. Prosecute? Not for all the world. Prosecute his one convert.

Never!

'It is we who prosecute!' said the banker. You will be compelled to appear as a witness, Mr. Ryan !'

But Hammond was never more seen or heard of, and of course was never put upon his trial.

It must have been, I think, in 1832 that the cholera broke out in Carlton. It fell with awful violence upon Mr. Ryan's tenants. There were eight or nine cottages, crowded dreadfully, and the hovels were in a shameful state. Fifty yards or so from this rookery stood a small house tenanted by the Baptist minister, whose chapel was a mile off. He was a fair specimen of his class and he had a wife who had been a governess in a gentleman's family and a daughter about sixteen years old. Rumours came to Ryan that the plague was raging. When Wraggles came in for orders he was unmistakably drunk. Ryan could not be blind to it; he clutched the fellow's collar and shook him violently. Thou limb of Paul!' he cried. 'Is it a time to walk in excess of wine, revellings, and banquetings when the Gospel has never been preached to them that are dead and thou art one of the dying?'

If

For once in his life Wraggles-pot-valiant-dared to make answer. 'That's all very fine, master. You're a jolly Peterite, you are! there ain't no Gospel, you go and give it 'em! That's all I say. You'd want a drop too if you saw 'em in among them cottages o' yourn!

,

It was a call to Simon Ryan. He did go among the dying and the dead. He seemed to bear a charmed life. The scenes he saw were indescribably horrible. Mr. Merrison, the Baptist minister, was smitten; he died in frightful agonies. The miserable and penniless widow followed her husband to the grave after laying him in his coffin with her own hands. She recovered from the cholera herself, only to die a week later from sheer exhaustion. Dolly, my darling!' she kept saying during those last hours. Dolly, do everything that God and

Mr. Ryan bid you. Between the two you'll never come to harm. Dolly! Do as they two bid you, and specially do what Mr. Ryan tells you is right!'

Then she fell asleep and never woke. The girl was stunned.

After the funeral, Dolly found herself an inmate of Mr. Ryan's house, she did not know how. She had one of the little bedrooms. It was hot summer, and she wanted no better apartment. Wraggles had fallen a victim to the cholera. The drink had helped that on; and Dolly and Mrs. Wraggles were drawn together in a kind of sad friendship. They were both bereaved ones and forlorn. Somehow the old strict and terrible discipline of the household had relaxed. Mrs. Wraggles had demanded help in the house; Simon had granted her two under-servants on condition that neither of them ever entered the library, and that neither ever appeared in his presence, nor were their voices ever to be heard. He himself would never be their master, or be referred to. Mrs. Wraggles must engage them and dismiss them as she pleased. Ryan's walks in the grounds' became less regular. He missed Wraggles, and the new bailiff jarred against his feelings. He began to walk out at all times of the day. The harvest had set in. Ryan actually went and looked on at the reapers— there were real reapers in those days. He mused shyly, speaking to none, only silently bowing in response to the greetings. Largess, Mas'r! Largess!' broke out from some voices. The cry grew to a general shout, and the men, sickles in hand, came crowding about him. He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a golden guinea. 'The end of all things is at hand!' he said. 'Be ye therefore sober!" The lord of the harvest-for in those days that functionary still had a recognised position in many parishes-pulled off his hat, and, scarcely believing his eyes, took the shining coin, spun it high up in the air, and shouted with triumphant joy: 'There's largess, mates !' There were shrieks of wondering rejoicing, and Mr. Ryan left them, to ́ finish his perambulation.

6

As he approached the house, there was Dolly! She came to meet him swiftly in great agitation. Mr. Ryan! Oh, Mr. Ryan! I've never found a word. I've never seen you-my heart is so very, very full! Oh, Mr. Ryan! mayn't I-mayn't I kiss your hand?'

She dropped on her knees, and before he could prevent her she had caught his hand and kissed it again and again. He was utterly perplexed and walked slowly on-she sobbing as if her heart would break, trying to speak and finding no articulate utterance-he silent and frightened by his own emotion. He passed into the library and shut her out. She went and hid her face in Mrs. Wraggles' lap, the good woman mingling her tears with the girl's, and softly stroking the glossy hair on the beautiful head while she poured forth many a gentle commonplace which yet it was a comfort to speak and a comfort to listen to.

All that day Simon was restless. He walked up and down the aisle for hours. As the time for dinner drew near he went to the door and left it wide open. Mrs. Wraggles was ordered to bring in the tray. An hour later she came back; Simon was still walking, and the dinner was untouched. She ventured to ask him if she should warm it up. He looked at her dreamily. 'Tell Miss Merrison that this room is open to her.'

That room! That sacred, mysterious room, with the coffin standing grimly there did he mean it?

'When, Mr. Ryan?'

'Now.'

The young girl, who had heard all about the coffin, and was prepared for it, came in without hesitation, all beaming with the joy of an immense gratitude, and met him in his walk. He turned from her and sat down upon the high-backed chair.

'Why did they christen you Dolly?'

"They didn't christen me at all: I have never been baptised.'

He started up with a look of horror on his face.

'Not baptised? Not a Christian? Everywhere the trail of the serpent! The great perverter still at work. The tent maker that boasted he had baptised none of them. Wretched girl!'

'Whatever you bid me I will do, Mr. Ryan. What less could I do?' Three weeks later the rector of the parish received a wondrous missive from Simon. He invited him to a conference. The rector was a well-meaning and earnest man, and, more than that, a man of robust good sense and tact. Somehow his pleasant voice and fearless outspokenness told with Simon. There were concessions made on both sides, and Dolly' was baptised in the church, one week-day morning, and received the name of Electa.

'I very nearly christened our young friend Electra,' said the parson as he took off his surplice. She has a new name in more

senses than one.'

Simon looked at him severely. 'New? Such are ye all—Paulicians every one. What know ye of the Word-ye that look as through a glass darkly? Ye who know nothing about those things of which the chief of the Apostles wrote save what ye find in your mean and beggarly mother-tongue. New is it? New-that at Simon Peter's side at Babylon there sat the Lady Electa whom ye, after your fashion, call "the Church," forsooth. Ye who know not that John the son of thunder wrote his loving letter to that same Lady Electa in the years of her widowhood when Simon Peter had been nailed to his cross.'

The rector smiled and made no reply. Why should he argue with a madman ?

Every morning during the previous month Electa had been summoned into the library to be taught the mysteries of the true faith. Simon went on by the hour, walking, talking, swinging his

arms.

What a joy to have found a disciple at last, one so docile and patient too, and growing day by day more reverent, submissive, and over-awed! It was a new life to the girl. Her father had been a hard, narrow man; a man of Scripture phrases, poured out by the yard, a man of unctuous manner with Dr. Watts's hymns for ever on his lips; a man of no knowledge, of vulgar manners, which offended and at times disgusted his more refined wife; a man too coarse in the grain to have any tenderness. He swallowed his victuals, spoke through his nose, made long prayers in a loud monotonous voice, but left the womankind,' as he called them, to go their own way, and hurled Bible texts at them when, on his return from his long perambulations, he found them reading together out of the dozen or so volumes of poetry, Milton, Cowper, Campbell's 'Pleasures of Hope,' Gray, and a few others, which his wife had provided herself with in her younger days.

To Electa the new life was full of revelations. The comparative luxury of the house as compared with the poverty she had been accustomed to; the contact with a man of original ideas, pouring out every moment some startling fact or suggestion such as she had never dreamed of before; the flashes of actual eloquence, lighting up the unintelligible jargon of philosophical and theosophic speculation, drawled out by the hour in a low, mysterious, sing-song till she knew not whether the speaker was human or divine, and her heart beat quick and her breathing well-nigh ceased as the sense of awe and mystery wrapt her round.

But with this intellectual ascendency that Simon had acquired over his disciple there can be no doubt that, quite unconsciously, he was exercising a most potent mesmeric mastery over the girl. She had become his constant companion now in the mornings. At two o'clock Mrs. Wraggles would bring in dinner for the pair. Now the cloth was laid on the long writing-table and they sat opposite one another. He with his eyes continually turned upon her. She every now and then giving him a bright, glad look of gratitude. After the meal she invariably withdrew without a word and joined Mrs. Wraggles. To the old woman Electa talked only of Simon, tried to repeat his lessons, to explain his views, to show how Paul of Tarsus was a bad man, the cuckoo's egg that the roaring lion had laid in the nest of the eagle John and ousted Simon Peter, the real bird of Paradise, the hope of the race.' Mrs. Wraggles would go to sleep over the revelations. The truth is, she didn't care a dump for all this 'Peterite' theology. Not she! She yawned, she bustled about. She was glad when ten o'clock came, and blessed the Lord she had no drunken husband now to disturb her rest, the rest which was so sweet. Then Electa would go to her little bedroom, and sleep such sleep as she had not known a little while ago. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP.

(To be concluded.)

THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE

TRADES UNION VOTE

ALTHOUGH it is a matter for unqualified regret that any statesman of the first rank should have spoken of 'the classes and the masses as opposing forces in the State, yet it behoves those who are concerned in the management of public affairs to accept that line of demarcation as one of the unfortunate conditions which have to be taken into account when considering the probable action of the electorate.

The labour vote, as opposed to the capitalist vote, which is the real interpretation of the cry of the masses against the classes, has never, we believe, been accurately estimated; and it is this we propose to do here by an analysis of the census returns as regards labour, and by a comparison of the figures produced with the voting strength of the country, and with the Trades Union statistics furnished by the Trades Unions themselves.

It may be stated generally that the figures show the Trades Union vote to be much smaller than would be supposed from the boldness of its platform declarations and the fears of its opponents. Let us hope that fuller information will temper that boldness and moderate those fears. We need not despair, for there is a wide difference between a Tower Hill Socialist and the cautious regulator of an organised trade; and while this difference counts for very much, it will also be seen that, when every grade of Trades Union politician between these two extremes has been summed up, the total by no means exhibits the powerful force in the State that politicians are accustomed to contemplate, with hope or apprehension, as their circumstances may determine.

The total of males in the United Kingdom over twenty years of age was 9,786,073 in 1891, and the total registered electors on the 1st of January 1892 was 6,158,023. Taking the census of 1891, and the General Election of 1892, throughout these calculations, we find that 48.5 per cent. of the males over twenty formed the active voting strength of the United Kingdom, and that whereas England