rom the kitchen came the
sounds of crying children and a scolding mother. Master Joseph Henry
Blows, aged three, was "holding his breath," and the family were all
aghast at the length of his performance. He re-covered it as his father
entered the room, and drowned, without distressing himself, the impotent
efforts of the others. Mrs. Blows turned upon her husband a look of hot
inquiry.

"I've got the chuck," he said, surlily.

"What, again?" said the unfortunate woman. "Yes, again," repeated her
husband.

Mrs. Blows turned away, and dropping into a chair threw her apron over
her head and burst into discordant weeping. Two little Blows, who had
ceased their outcries, resumed them again from sheer sympathy.

"Stop it," yelled the indignant Mr. Blows; "stop it at once; d'ye hear?"

"I wish I'd never seen you," sobbed his wife from behind her apron. "Of
all the lazy, idle, drunken, good-for-nothing----"

"Go on," said Mr. Blows, grimly.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," declared Mrs. Blows. "Look at
your father, my dears," she continued, taking the apron away from her
face; "take a good look at him, and mind you don't grow up like it."

Mr. Blows met the combined gaze of his innocent offspring with a dark
scowl, and then fell to moodily walking up and down the passage until he
fell over the pail. At that his mood changed, and, turning fiercely, he
kicked that useful article up and down the passage until he was tired.

"I've 'ad enough of it," he muttered. He stopped at the kitchen-door
and, putting his hand in his pocket, threw a handful of change on to the
floor and swung out of the house.

Another pint of beer confirmed him in his resolution. He would go far
away and make a fresh start in the world. The morning was bright and the
air fresh, and a pleasant sense of freedom and adventure possessed his
soul as he walked. At a swinging pace he soon left Gravelton behind him,
and, coming to the river, sat down to smoke a final pipe before turning
his back forever on a town which had treated him so badly.

The river murmured agreeably and the rushes stirred softly in the breeze;
Mr. Blows, who could fall asleep on an upturned pail, succumbed to the
influence at once; the pipe dropped from his mouth and he snored
peacefully.

He was awakened by a choking scream, and, starting up hastily, looked
about for the cause. Then in the water he saw the little white face of
Billy Clements, and wading in