found scarce a trace of his features; and his hand
came away gory. He groaned.

Rising to his feet, he saw Dodd sitting at
some distance: his first impulse was to fly from
so terrible an antagonist: but, as he made for
the ravine, he observed that Dodd was in a helpless
condition: wounded perhaps by Moinard.
And where was Moinard?

Nothing visible of him, but his knife: that
lay glittering in the road.

Thibout, with anxious eye turned towards
Dodd, kneeled to pick it up: and in the act a
drop of his own blood fell on the dust beside it.
He snarled like a wounded tiger; spat out half
a dozen teeth: and crept on tiptoe to his safe
revenge.

Awake from your lethargy, or you are a dead
man!

No. Thibout got to him unperceived, and the
knife glittered over his head.

At this moment the air seemed to fill with
clattering hoofs and voices, and a pistol-shot
rang. Dodd heard and started, and so saw his
peril. He put up his left hand to parry the blow;
but feebly. Luckily for him Thibout's eyes
were now turned another way, and glaring with
stupid terror out of his mutilated visage: a
gigantic, mounted, fiend, with black face and
white gleaming, rolling, eyes, was coming at him
like the wind, uttering horrid howls; Thibout
launched himself at the precipice with a shriek
of dismay, and went rolling alter his comrade:
but, ere he had gone ten yards, he fell across a
young larch-tree, and hung balanced. Up came
the foaming horses: Fullalove dismounted
hastily and fired three deliberate shots down at
Thibout from his revolver. He rolled off, and
never stopped again till he splashed into the
torrent, and lay there staining it with blood
from his battered face, and perforated shoulder.

Vespasian jumped off, and with glistening
eyes administered some good brandy to Dodd.
He, unconscious of his wound, a slight one,
relieved their anxiety by assuring them
somewhat faintly he was not hurt, but that, ever
since that "tap on the head" he got in the
Straits of Gaspar, any angry excitement told on
him, made his head swim, and his temples seem
to swell from the inside.

"I should have come off second best but for
you, my dear friends. Shake hands over it, do!
Oh, Lord bless you! Lord bless you both! As
for you, Vespasian, I do think you are my guardian
angel. Why this is the second time you've
saved It. No it isn't: for it's the third."

"Now you git along, Massa Cap'n," said
Vespasian. "You bery good man, ridicalous good
man: and dis child arn't no gardening angel at
all; he ar a darned Anatomy" (with such a look
of offended dignity at Fullalove).

After examining the field of battle, and
comparing notes, they mounted Dodd on Vespasian's
horse, and walked quietly till Dodd's
head got better; and then they cantered on
three abreast, Vespasian in the middle with
one sinewy hand on each horse's mane; and
such was his muscular power that he often relieved
his feet by lifting himself clean into the
air: and the rest of the time his toe but touched
the ground: and he sailed like an ostrich: and
grinned and chattered like a monkey.

Sad to relate, neither Thibout nor Moiuard
was ended. The guillotine stood on its rights.
Meantime, what was left of them crawled back
to the town stiff and sore; and supped together
—Moinard on liquids only—and vowed revenge
on all wrecked people.

The three reached Boulogne in time for the
Nancy, and put Dodd on board: the pair
decided to go to the Yankee Paradise—Paris.

They parted with regret and tenderly like old
tried friends; and Vespasian told Dodd, with the
tears in his eyes, that, though he was in point of
fact only a darned Anemone, he felt like a
coloured Gemman, at parting from his dear old
captain.

The master of the Nancy knew Dodd well,
and gave him a nice cot to sleep in. He
tumbled in with a bad headache, and quite
worn out; and never woke for fifteen hours.

And when he did wake he was safe at
Barkington.

He and It landed on the quay. He made for
home.

On the way, he passed Hardie's Bank; a firm
synonymous in his mind with the Bank of
England.

A thrill of joy went through him. Now It
was safe. When he first sewed It on in China,
It seemed secure nowhere except on his own
person. But, since then, the manifold perils by
sea and land It had encountered through being
on him, had caused a strong reaction in his mind
on that point. He longed to see It safe out of
his own hands, and in good custody.

He made for Hardie.'s door with a joyful
rush, waved his cap over his head in triumph,
and entered the Bank with It.

Ah!

DR. FAUSTUS, SET TO MUSIC.

IT was said here, not long ago, with
reference to Shakespeare's heroes and heroines,
that some among them who have proved the
most tempting to artists have been the least
manageable as subjects for music.—Hamlet cannot
be presented in opera without one-half of the
heart of his mystery being plucked out, and the
other moiety drained of many among the mingling
drops which gave to its blood so peculiar a
colour. There is a distant relation to Hamlet—
his own cousin Faustus—insomuch as aspiration
and yearning are kinsfolk to deep, disturbing,
irresolute melancholy—who is well-nigh as
inaccessible as Hamlet for every musician's purpose;
yet who is for ever and ever taken as a theme for
chords and chorals, and in illustrating whose life
and works, counterpoint has again and again
attempted to work out its scientific devices, and
the spirit of melody to show her cunning.

The German musical quota in this tribute to
the sorceries of the legend of the Doctor and