and handing tools to his companion, was
stuffing birds very much in the same way
as he had bound books.

It was a fine sight to see old Jack Byrne,
"Bitter Byrne," the ultra-radical, the
sourest-tongued orator of the Spartan Club,
the ex-Chartist prisoner, waited on by
gorgeous footmen in plush and silk stockings,
fed on French dishes and dry sherry,
and accepting it all as if he had been born
to the situation.

"Why should I quarrel with my bread
and butter, or what's a devilish deal better
than bread and butter," he asked, in the
course of a long evening's ramble with
Walter Joyce, "because it comes from a
representative of the class I hate? I earn
it, I work honestly and hard for my wage,
and suppose I am to act up to the sham
self-denial preached in some of the prints
which batten on the great cause without
understanding or caring for it—suppose I
were to refuse the meal which my lord's
politeness ends me, as some of your
self-styled Gracchi or Patriots would wish,
how much further should we have developed
the plans, or by what the more should
we have dealt a blow at the institution
we are labouring to destroy? Not one
jot! My maxim, as I have told you betore,
is, use these people! Hate them if you
will, despise them as you must, but use
them!"

The old man's vehemence had a certain
weight with Joyce, who, nevertheless, was
not wholly convinced as to the propriety of
his friend's position, and said, "You justify
your conduct by Lord Hetherington's, then?
You use each other?"

"Exactly! My Lord Hetherington in
Parliament says, or would say if he was
allowed the chance, but they know him too
well for that, so he can only show by his
votes and his proxies—proxies, by the
Lord! isn't that a happy state of things
when a minister can swamp any measure
that he chooses by pulling from his pocket
a few papers sent to him by a few brother
peers, who care so little about the question
in hand that they won't even leave their
dinner tables to come down and hear it discussed!—
says that he loathes what he is
pleased to call the lower classes, and considers
them unworthy of being represented
in the legislature. But then he wants to
stuff birds, or rather to be known as a bird
stuffer of taste, and none of the House of
Peers can help him there. So he makes
inquiries, and is referred to me, and engages
me, and we work together—neither
abrogating our own sentiments. He uses
my skill, I take his money, each has his
quid pro quo, and if the time were ever to
come—as it may come, Walter, mark my
words—as it must come, for everything is
tending towards it, when the battle of the
poor against the rich, the bees against the
drones, is fought in this country, fought
out, I mean, practically and not theoretically,
we shall each of us, my Lord Hetherington
and I, be found on our respective sides
without the slightest obligation from one to
the other!"

Joyce had come to look forward to those
evening walks with the old man as the
pleasantest portion of the day. From nine
till six he laboured conscientiously at the
natural history work which Mr. Byrne had
procured for him, dull uninteresting work
enough, but sufficiently fairly rewarded.
Then he met his old friend at Bliffkins's,
and after their frugal meal they set out for
a long ramble through the streets. Byrne
was full of information, which, in his
worldly-wise fashion, he imparted, tinged
with social philosophy or dashed with an
undercurrent of his own peculiar views.
Of which an example. Walter Joyce had
been standing for five minutes, silent, rapt
in delight at his first view of the Parliament
Houses as seen from Westminster Bridge.
A bright moonlight night, soft, dreamy,
even here, with a big yellow harvest moon
coming up from the back, throwing the
delicate tracery into splendid relief, and
sending out the shadows thick and black;
the old man looking on calmly, quietly
chuckling at the irrepressible enthusiasm
mantling over his young friend's cheeks
and gleaming in his eyes.

"A fine place, lad?"

"Fine! splendid, superb!"

"Well, not to put too fine a point upon
it, we'll say fine. Ah, they may blackguard
Barry as much as they like, and when it
comes to calling names and flinging mud in
print, mind you, I don't know anybody to
beat your architect or your architect's
friend, but there's not another man among
'em could have done anything like that!
That's a proper dignified house for the
Parliament of the People to sit in—when it
comes!"

"But it does sit there, doesn't it?"

"It? What? The Parliament of the
People? No, sir; that sits, if you would
believe certain organs of the press, up a
court in Fleet-street, where it discusses the
affairs of the nation over screws of shag
tobacco and pots of fourpenny ale. What