"Well," retorted Drummle: " he'll be paid."

"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said
I, " but it might make you hold your tongue
about us and our money, I should think."

"You should think!" retorted Drummle.
"Oh Lord!"

"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very
severe, " that you wouldn't lend money to any
of us, if we wanted it."

"You are right," said Drummle. " I wouldn't
lend one of you a sixpence. I wouldn't lend
anybody a sixpence."

"Rather mean to borrow under those
circumstances, I should say."

"You should say," repeated Drummle. " Oh
Lord!"

This was so very aggravating—the more
especially, as I found myself making no way
against his surly obtuseness— that I said,
disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me:

"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the
subject, I'll tell you what passed between Herbert
here and me, when you borrowed that money."

"I don't want to know what passed between
Herbert there and you," growled Drummle. And
I think he added in a lower growl, that we might
both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether
you want to know or not. We said that as you
put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you
seemed to be immensely amused at his being
so weak as to lend it."

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing
in our faces, with his hands in his pockets and
his round shoulders raised: plainly signifying
that it was quite true, and that he despised us
as asses all.

Hereupon, Startop took him in hand, though
with a much better grace than I had shown, and
exhorted him to be a little more agreeable.
Startop, being a lively bright young fellow,
and Drummle being the exact opposite, the
latter was always disposed to resent him as a
direct personal affront. He now retorted in a
coarse lumpish way, and Startop tried to turn
the discussion aside with some small pleasantry
that made us all laugh. Resenting this little
success more than anything, Drummle without
any threat or warning pulled his hands out
of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders,
swore, took up a large glass, and would have
flung it at his adversary's head, but for our
entertainer's dexterously seizing it at the
instant when it was raised for that purpose.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately
putting down the glass, and hauling out his gold
repeater by its massive chain, "I am exceedingly
sorry to announce that it's half-past nine."

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we
got to the street door, Startop was cheerily
calling Drummle " old boy," as if nothing had
happened. But the old boy was so far from
responding, that he would not even walk to
Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so,
Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them
going down the street on opposite sides;
Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in
the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont
to follow in his boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I
would leave Herbert there for a moment, and
run up-stairs again to say a word to my guardian.
I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by
his stock of boots, already hard at it, washing
his hands of us.

I told him that I had come up again, to say
how sorry I was that anything disagreeable
should have occurred, and that I hoped he would
not blame me much.

"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking
through the water-drops; " it's nothing, Pip.
I like that Spider though."

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking
his head, and blowing, and towelling himself.

"I am glad you like him, sir," said I " but
I don't."

"No, no," my guardian assented, " don't
have too much to do with him. Keep as clear
of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip;
he is one of the true-sort. Why, if I was a
fortune-teller—-"

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said,
letting his head drop into a festoon of towel,
and towelling away at his two ears. " You know
what I am, don't you? Good night, Pip."

"Good night, sir."

In about a mouth after that, the Spider's time
with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the
great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he
went home to the family hole.

ERRATUM. In No. 97, Chapter xxii. of Great Expecta-
tions, page 481, second column, line 15 from the bottom,
the word " nephew" is printed instead of " cousin." The
line should read, "My father is Miss Havisham's cousin."

                 POETS AT FAULT.

OF all the regular phenomena of Nature,
hardly one is so beautiful and solemn, or so
deeply interesting to man, as the dawn of light
in the early morning. It is interesting to the
heart of man, not only because it is the
natural call to renewed labour, but because it
is the return to our hemisphere of the very
source of life and fertility. How grand the
thought that that golden centre of light and
heat, thousands of miles away in the
measureless amplitude of heaven, shines
unceasingly for man; that when for a brief space he
quits our sight, it is to vivify our human
kindred at the antipodes, leaving to us shadows
and sleep and dreams; that this globe of ours is
perpetually basking, in some portion of its
surface, in the splendour of the solar sphere, gliding
smoothly, noiselessly, and unrestingly, out
of zones of brightness into zones of night, out
of darkness into day. At no moment are we
made so sensible of this sublime ordination as
at the time of dawn; and no operation of
Providence is so suggestive of poetry as this daily
repetition of one of the chief creative acts.

Yet it would seem that the greatest of our
English poets have not been fully impressed