pearance, and would learn to look
below the mere surface, and then there was always the possibility of
putting everything right by means of the magic stone.

"I won't lose a minute!" he said aloud; and letting down the window,
leaned out and shouted "Stop!" till he was hoarse.

But Clegg either could not or would not hear; he drove on at full speed,
a faster rate of progress than that adopted by most drivers of
four-wheeled cabs being one of his chief recommendations.

They were now passing Euston. It was a muggy, slushy night, with a thin
brown fog wreathing the houses and fading away above their tops into a
dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the
blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over
its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights
flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in
which to be out-of-doors.

Paul would have opened the cab-door and jumped out had he dared, but his
nerve failed him, and, indeed, considering the speed of the cab, the
leap would have been dangerous to a far more active person. So he was
forced to wait resignedly until the station should be reached, when he
determined to make Clegg understand his purpose with as little loss of
time as possible.

"I must pay him something extra," he thought; "I'll give him a sovereign
to take me back." And he searched his pockets for the loose coin he
usually carried about with him in such abundance; there was no gold in
any of them.

He found, however, a variety of minor and less negotiable articles,
which he fished out one by one from unknown depths--a curious
collection. There was a stumpy German-silver pencil case, a broken prism
from a crystal chandelier, a gilded Jew's harp, a little book in which
the leaves on being turned briskly, gave a semblance of motion to the
sails of a black windmill drawn therein, a broken tin soldier, some
Hong-Kong coppers with holes in them, and a quantity of little cogged
wheels from the inside of a watch; while a further search was rewarded
by an irregular lump of toffee imperfectly enfolded in sticky brown
paper.

He threw the whole of these treasures out of the window with
indescribable disgust, and, feeling something like a purse in a side
pocket, opened it eagerly.

It held five shillings exactly, the coins corresponding to those he had
pushed across to his son such a little while ago! It did not seem to him