was as great a blackguard in his way as
Timothy Salt had been in his. So Mrs.
Salt went to live with her at Boulogne,
and took care of her till she died of
consumption the doctors said— of a broken
heart as she and Mrs. Salt knew. With
her last breath she besought her kind friend
to keep her child out of the father's hands.
Nicholas had a home to offer his mother, and
May Trevor's child came to him. He was
married quite happily: he was a prosperous
man and a good man. The only further
incident connected with this story is, that
Timothy Salt died in the insane ward of a
distant workhouse.

OVER THE WAY.

AT a time when I lived high up in Paris
—perhaps it was on the fifth story— I could
look up from my window along the roof of
a house opposite and see two or three small
apertures that evidently belonged to
inhabited chambers. Counting the ground-
floor, there were then eight layers of human
dwellings piled one above the other opposite;
and I used often to amuse myself by wondering
how many different classes of persons
must enjoy the same street-door in common.
The first reflection that occurs to a stranger
is that this apparently promiscuous style of
living must be the means of bringing about
a kindly feeling between the humble and
the proud. One cannot, it would seem,
shoulder a man year after year upon a staircase
without learning in some sort to
sympathise with him. Practically, however,
this is not so. Relations rarely spring up
even between neighbours on the same floor.
I have never seen the man who lived for
two years in the room over my head, though
I did once send him a request not to dance
about with heavy boots at two o'clock in
the morning. People go out at different hours.
The workmen who occupy the upper story
are always away before others have opened
their eyes; and come in at dusk whilst we
have gone to the Palais Royal to dinner.

I knew, therefore, that the inhabitants of
the garrets that excited my attention might
be as much cut off from the rest of the
world as if they dwelt out upon a moor. For
some time I did not catch a sight of the faces of
any of them; but I knew that the little room
to the right was occupied by a woman— and
a young woman too— for on one side was
hung a rather dilapidated cage containing a
canary that probably sung sometimes, whilst
on the other, supported by a hoop of wire,
was a single flower-pot. A hand sometimes
appeared coming from below to stick chickweed
between the bars of the cage or to pour
water on the flower-pot, so that I knew the
window was very high placed on, so that the
lodger must be remarkably small.

The opening exactly opposite me for a
long time gave no sign of life. Like the
others, it was scarcely eighteen inches square,
and being placed on a slanting roof, stood
out like a little house with the gable end
turned towards the street. One afternoon
when the sun was shining full upon it, a
man's face, surrounded by an immense shock
of red hair and a prodigious beard of the
same colour, appeared and nearly filled it.
The idea of criminality at once entered my
mind. I had seen a similar face staring out
of a kind of loop-hole in the life-prison at
Louisiana— out upon the sunny world which
its owner more than twenty years before had
desecrated by murder. That was when I
was a child; but the impression produced
was so strong that even now I can never see
a person looking fixedly forth from a small
window without having to struggle with the
idea that he must be a child of guilt. My
neighbour over the way seemed to be looking
at nothing in particular— but straight forward
over my head— perhaps at the sky beyond,
perhaps at some distant steeple-tower. I
looked back two or three times mechanically
into my own room, as if my glances were
compelled to obey the direction of his. Each
time I turned towards him there he was, his
beard resting on the sill, gazing forward, as
if he took some peculiar pleasure in tormenting
me. Decidedly, there could be no doubt
that he was immoral or insane.

For several days after this I rarely went to
my window without seeing that hairy face,
wearing precisely the same expression; and
a certain amount of painful sympathy was by
degrees excited. As it was, in a time of
political commotion, I might have charitably
imagined the man to be some popular chief
compelled by circumstances to keep out of
the way. The idea never entered my mind.
He must be at the very least an escaped
convict, waiting in that retirement until the
vigilance of the police should relax. We
do not like to bring even such individuals
into trouble unnecessarily. I refrained therefore
from asking any questions on the subject,
for fear of drawing attention to the unfortunate
fellow who might possibly repent of his
evil ways in his self-imposed solitary
confinement.

I spent a good deal of time watching those two
windows, and remember feeling a vast amount
of satisfaction when, one day, between the
cage and the flower-pot, appeared a very
bright-looking face that continued to work its
chin over the sill and to look around. The
man with the red beard was at his post, and
I could not help contrasting those two
countenances, and making all sorts of moral
reflections on the extent to which even the
humblest dwelling could be made a Paradise
or otherwise by the personal characters of
those who inhabit it. What a gloomy den
must the chamber of the escaped convict
appear— everything in disorder; the bed
never made; the furniture broken; the door
carefully locked and bolted; a crevice