says, turned from the door of a church
some years ago by the beadle, who told
him he was much too dirty to come in.
"Perhaps what he said was true," observed
Jack, when he told me the circumstance;
"but I thought all the same, that I might
have been allowed to go into a corner.
Howsomever, I went away, and sat upon a
tombstone to rest myself out of the beadle's
sight, and hear the organ play, and thought
that, maybe, when I was put under the
mould, I might be as clean as Mr. Beadle
or Mr. Parson, or any of the grand folks in
the pews! And I think so still, though, as I
said, it was a good many years ago, and I
was not so near the mould as I am now."
But though Jack avoids church in summer,
he regularly attends the service in the Union
during the winter months, and seems, from
the manner in which he speaks of the
sermons he hears, to be quite as good a
Christian as his betters, who "fare sumptuously
every day."

The last time I saw Jack he was on his
way to the union workhouse for the winter,
when he showed me the ticket of admission
duly signed by the relieving officer.

"I am afraid," he said, " I shall not
come out again; though I shall be glad to
see the primroses and hear the cuckoo once
more. I don't think I have been a very bad
man, though once, and only once in my life,
I had a pheasant for dinner."

I thought Jack was going to talk about
that poaching business at last; but he hesitated,
and pulled up suddenly.

"No! I have not been a very bad man;
and if I have not worked as hard as other
people, it is because I have not been able to
work."

"Well, Jack!" I said, "your life has
been a hard one, I have no doubt. But I
never knew much harm of you; and I suppose
that, like the rest of us, you have had
your joys as well as your sorrows."

"There was a young woman," he said
—but he did not wipe his eye with his cuff,
nor whimper—" who was very fond of me,
nnd she died when I was twenty and she
was eighteen. Since that time the best
things I have known in the world have
been the sunshine and the warm weather.
It is very hard to be poor, and lonely, and
cold. Cold, as far as I know, is the worst
of all—worse than hunger; at least I've
found it so. And if it were not for the
cold, I don't think I'd go to the Union
at all, but would try and jog along in the
winter as I do in the summer."

Poor Jack, it will be seen, though he has
a certain amount of pride, has not a very
high spirit—how could he have, with such
a hopeless battle to fight?—and by no
means despises the workhouse, or thinks it
derogatory to his manly dignity as some of
the hard-working poor do, to depend upon
it for assistance. Without its kindly hand,
however, he would doubtless die in the cold
December—of "serum on the brain," as
the parish doctors have lately taken to call
starvation. So small blame be to him for
going into it when he must, and for coming
out of it when he can. In spite of his last
fit of despondency, I hope to see the old
fellow out again in the spring, along with
his favourite primroses, listening to the
cuckoo, gathering simples, and drawing
such comfort out of the sunshine as Diogenes
may have done, but without the
misanthropy, that perhaps was not real,
even with Diogenes.

AS THE CROW FLIES.
DUE WEST. HOUNSLOW HEATH.

[WE purpose, in a rapid series of papers, to fly with
the crow in various directions from London, and take a
bird's-eye view of the roads as they have been.]

SWIFT in a phantom mail coach, the ghosts of
four " spankers" whirl us along the great west
road. The phantom guard blows a faint blast
on his phantom horn as we dash down the long
dingy street of Brentford, and sweep on with
whizzing wheels between the broad nursery
gardens. Here and there, a ladder reared
against the fruit tree boughs, shows where the
last russets and leather jackets have just been
picked for all-devouring London. Faster,
through Brentford, where the ghosts of Hogarth's
time seem for ever grouped around the
doorway of that quaint inn, The London Apprentice.
On past the river almshouses and
the little garden by which the dark barge sails
flit; on between the rows of shops and the
gables of the small town at the Duke's Gate, and
we are at Hounslow and on legendary ground.

Were we magicians we should at once call
together the dispersed atoms of the highwaymen
who rattled in chains above the Hounslow furze
bushes. From the roots of the fir trees, and the
earth beneath the brambles, from the flints of the
road side and the water of the rivulets, we would
collect the fragments of the wicked bodies, until
once more the " Captain " who swore " by the
bones of Jerry Abershaw " should appear in
his black mask, gold-laced cocked hat, and
scarlet roquelaure, with his silver " pops " in
his deep pockets, bestriding his chesnut mare,
the bold and reckless rascal of the pleasant
days when thirteen gibbets stood at one time
near Bason Bridge on the road to Heston.
Yes! Thirteen shapeless bundles, dangled at one
time in view of the wayfarer across the terrible
heath, in the beginning of this century. It
was an old joke against Lord Islay, who once