ithout intervention of class or
creed, the more the humanity, which is the divinity of it, will appear.'

He then told her about Nancy.

'I will keep her about myself for a while,' said Miss St. John, 'till
I see what can be done with her. I know a good many people who without
being prepared, or perhaps able to take any trouble, are yet ready to do
a kindness when it is put in their way.'

'I feel more and more that I ought to make some friends,' said Falconer;
'for I find my means of help reach but a little way. What had I better
do? I suppose I could get some introductions.--I hardly know how.'

'That will easily be managed. I will take that in hand. If you will
accept invitations, you will soon know a good many people--of all
sorts,' she added with a smile.

About this time Falconer, having often felt the pressure of his
ignorance of legal affairs, and reflected whether it would not add to
his efficiency to rescue himself from it, began such a course of study
as would fit him for the profession of the law. Gifted with splendid
health, and if with a slow strength of grasping, yet with a great power
of holding, he set himself to work, and regularly read for the bar.

CHAPTER VIII. MY OWN ACQUAINTANCE.

It was after this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I
had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the
Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false
magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of
a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned
northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden,
when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop,
carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent her head over, ill
with the poisonous stuff she had been drinking. And while the woman
stood in this degrading posture, the poor, white, wasted baby was
looking over her shoulder with the smile of a seraph, perfectly
unconscious of the hell around her.

'Children will see things as God sees them,' murmured a voice beside me.

I turned and saw a tall man with whose form I had already become a
little familiar, although I knew nothing of him, standing almost at my
elbow, with his eyes fixed on the woman and the child, and a strange
smile of tenderness about his mouth, as if he were blessing the little
creature in his heart.

He too saw the wonder of the show, typical of so much in the