indeed, which to any suffering less than hers,
would have worn the semblance of despair. A
little while now and he would be safe, safe for
the present, for the next few hours, which were
so all-important. The letter she had written,
telling him all she had done, and why, would
await him at Amiens, and show him that all his
plans were vain, would convince him, at last.
The arrangement of his money matters, which
he must have made for the flight he contemplated,
would avail in the case of this flight
which she had imposed upon him. A little more
torture, a little more suspense, and something
like rest would come. Perhaps she should be able
to sleep a little to-night, while he would be speeding
through the darkness to safety. Something
like a forlorn sense of peace came to her with
the anticipation. So she walked up and down,
thinking these thoughts, and sometimes lapsing
into a mental blank, out of which condition she
would come with a start, to go into a kind of
vision of the last two days—of the woman she
had so completely mastered —of the last time
she had seen her husband's face— of the blow
he had struck her; but she felt no anger in the
remembrance; what did it matter now, in the
face of this great crisis? It was strange that
she had heard nothing of George, and the fact
rendered her only the more eager and
apprehensive. He was busy with the investigation,
which must end in—what? In that which she
had now effectually prevented. So she walked
up and down, thinking, and the platform became
peopled, and all the fuss and hurry of the
departure of the tidal train was around her.
Presently, as she reached the end of the platform,
and turned, to resume her walk, she saw her
husband, coming quickly towards the line of
carriages, carrying the small bag which had
been sent to him at Tokenhouse-yard in the
morning, and which she had packed with
reference to this occasion. Routh, indeed, had
been not a little surprised by its contents. He
came along the platform, the bag in one hand,
a letter in the other, looking frowningly round,
as though in search of somebody. She shrank
back, as much out of sight as possible. Presently,
just as he was stepping into a carriage, Jim
Swain appeared, and went up to him. A
few words passed between them, and then
Harriet saw two persons, one of whom was a
smart, slightly built man in a grey suit, address
him. Straining her eyes with a fixed intensity
of gaze which made her brain ache, she looked.
He tore the letter in his hand to pieces, with
inconceivable quickness, the fragments fluttering
to the ground, turned, and with one of his
unknown interlocutors on either side, and Jim
following—how strange the boy looked, Harriet
thought—walked along the platform, passed
through the barrier, and was lost to her gaze
at the distant entrance.

Harriet stood rooted to the spot. It was
not until all the passengers had taken their
places, and the train had gone off with a shriek
and a pant, that she had the power to move.
Then a moan of utter despair burst from her
white lips, and a cold thrill shook her limbs, as
she murmured:

"He has been called back on business, and
he is lost, utterly lost!"

ODD WATCHES.

FROM the period when men began to wear
pocket clocks, as they were at first called,
but watches or time- watchers, as they were
afterwards designated, all sorts of fanciful
vagaries were indulged in by the makers and
wearers; as if a new shape for a watch were as
naturally to be looked for as new fashions in
hats or boots, or new modes of dressing viands
for the table. Whoever wishes to know all
about escapements, movements, chains, pendulums,
fusees, balances, arbors, ratchet-wheels,
mainsprings, stops, repeating, going, winding,
compensation, jewelling, capping, and so forth,
in relation to their peculiarities and first
introduction, will find abundant to satisfy him in Mr.
Wood's " Curiosities of Clocks and Watches;"
but some of the changes in form and mode of
watch-achievement may be grouped here.

Early watchmakers, patronising the vegetable
kingdom, adopted the forms of fruits and
flowers. In the Bernal collection (a rare
medley of artistic odds and ends) there was a
Nuremberg watch in the shape of a pear, in
parcel-gilt silver. Another, shaped like a
melon, was made by a Frenchman. It is only
one inch and a quarter in diameter, and has a
key in form of a melon-leaf. At the South
Kensington Museum is a very small apple-
shaped watch, about a century old, with a gold
enamel case studded with seed pearls. One of
the old watches of Nuremberg has the form of
an acorn, and is provided with a small wheel-
lock pistol, which is supposed to have been
used as an alarum. One watch, talked about
by the archaeologists, is in the shape of a tulip,
with three crystal faces. Another, having the
same form, but scarcely an inch in diameter,
is so constructed that the leaves or petals of
the flower open a little at the bottom of the
watch disclosing a small spring, which, when
pressed, pushes up the lid and shows the dial-
face.

Mr. Bernal had a watch in which the works
were contained within the body of a tiny
eagle; the imitative bird opened across the
centre, and displayed a richly engraved dial-
plate, while the exterior was rendered classical
by the story of Jupiter and Ganymede; it might
either be worn suspended from the girdle by a
ring, or be rested on a table by means of three
claws. Ducks have sometimes had a share of
watchmakers' attention bestowed upon them—-
witness a duck-shape watch about two inches and
a half long, in the South Kensington Museum,
and another in a private collection, in which the
feathers of the duck are chased in silver, and
the lower half, when opened, exhibits a dial-face
decked with jewels.

A whole class of watches were for generations