"I know enough to say that in this
place all losses appear magnified, unnaturally
distorted even. When you get
away, you will smile to see how you have
been affected. I have known this happen
again and again. Even if the loss be
great, what is it compared with the
sorrow, despair, waste of life, and utter
hopelessness into which this morbid feeling
of yours will hurry you!"

"You speak to me," I said, "with
uncommon freedom, sir."

"Good Heavens!" he went on, "what
are a few pounds, compared with life, and
a happy home; with the misery which you
selfishly—forgive me the word—entail on
those who should be so dear to you should
you persist in investing this matter with all
the horrors of a tragedy. Come, Mr. Austen,
be a man, and a manly one; face this difficulty
as a hundred thousand merchants and
commercial men have faced far greater ones.
The first thing is, fly from this place, without
a second's delay. Think of your lost
money as if it had gone back into the
bowels of the earth from whence it came.
Let it go! It will never come back to
you!"

"Fine comforter!" I said.

"Get to your own home, your dear home,
as fast as you can travel, night and day, until
you have put the sea between you and this
fatal tempter. Then search out your friends,
tell them the trouble boldly, get the weight
off your soul, and you will be amazed to find
with what a quiet, 'Is that all?' they will
come to rescue you from your terrible
misfortune."

"Fine advice!" I said, bitterly. "Your
trade, sir, in this place, accustoms you to
think lightly of all the wretchedness that
flows from the infamous system maintained
here! At the news of some wretch found
suspended in that wood, 'Is that all?' would
be the remark of you, and your employers."

He coloured.

"'My employers!' But I see I am wasting
your time and my own. I must tell you
that you have been most ungracious, now as
you were in the beginning. If you had
attended to me then, with even ordinary
civility, you might have been spared this
humiliation and even degradation. For I
tell you, and I see it as plainly as that
bright sun, you are only beginning, and you
will be dragged down fatally, lower and
still lower. The very first day I noted
your self-sufficiency and confidence, and air
of superiority to these most pardonable
human failings."

"Pardonable," I said, amazed at the
man's obsequious toleration of vice.

"Yes, pardonable; and I knew that you
would be one of the earliest to fall. I would
have helped you, that is, have got you help,
to leave this place; but go on your own
road now: I shall not trouble you more."

He was gone, to make his morning calls
to the fashionable strangers wandering
about, just as the humbug German doctor
made his. How insulting he was with his
impertinent taunt about "my superiority" and
self-sufficiency, because I dared to encroach
upon his preserves and to talk piously and
conscientiously without a licence! There was
the sting! So he would get me helped
away would he? Now I see it all. His
employers would be the ones to help me
away. They do not like to see excited faces,
or wild eyes, about their place. It scares the
genteel. Fine almonership for the church!
And, sooner than contaminate my fingers
with their unholy gold, I would beg! So
that was the secret of his embassy. I shall
neither fly nor stay; but I am not sunk so
low, as that the loss of some money should
lay me under obligation to a doubtful and
"shady," as they call it, parson.

    NOTE TO SOUTH AFRICAN GOLD.

WE have received a temperate statement
from a resident in Pretoria, the capital of the
Transvaal Republic, referring to the article,
South African Gold, which appeared in Number
Five of our NEW SERIES, page one hundred and
six.

It would appear that, although many bad
characters may make the Transvaal Republic a
place of refuge, it should by no means be
inferred that the population is exclusively
recruited from the ranks of the miscreants and
other members of the "dangerous" classes.

  MR. CHARLES DICKENS'S FAREWELL
                      READINGS.
MR. CHARLES DICKENS will read at Glasgow,
February 18; Edinburgh, February 19; Glasgow,
February 22; Edinburgh, February 24; Glasgow,
February 25; Edinburgh, February 26; St. James's Hall,
London, March 2; Wolverhampton, March 4;
Manchester, March 6 and 8; Hull, March 10; York, March
11; Hull, March 12.
All communications to be addressed to MESSRS.
CHAPPELL AND Co., 50, New Bond-street, London, W.