ition as
reporter on the "Morning Herald," and Dickens, too, resolved
to try his fortune in that direction. Teaching himself
shorthand, and studying diligently at the British Museum, at
the age of twenty-two he secured permanent employment on the
staff of a London paper. "Barnaby Rudge," the fifth of
Dickens's novels, appeared serially in "Master Humphrey's
Clock" during 1841. It thus followed "The Old Curiosity Shop,"
the character of Master Humphrey being revived merely to
introduce the new story, and on its conclusion "The Clock" was
stopped for ever. In 1849 "Barnaby Rudge" was published in
book form. Written primarily to express the author's
abhorrence of capital punishment, from the use he made of the
Gordon Riots of 1780, "Barnaby Rudge," like "A Tale of Two
Cities," may be considered an historical work. It is more of a
story than any of its predecessors. Lord George Gordon, the
instigator of the riots, died a prisoner in the Tower of
London, after making public renunciation of Christianity in
favour of the Jewish religion. "The raven in this story," said
Dickens, "is a compound of two originals, of whom I have been
the proud possessor." Dickens died at Gad's Hill on June 9,
1870, having written fourteen novels and a great number of
short stories and sketches.

_I.--Barnaby and the Robber_

In the year 1775 there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, in the
village of Chigwell, about twelve miles from London, a house of public
entertainment called the Maypole, kept by John Willet, a large-headed
man with a fat face, of profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension,
combined with a very strong reliance upon his own merits.

From this inn, Gabriel Varden, stout-hearted old locksmith of
Clerkenwell, jogged steadily home on a chaise, half sleeping and half
waking, on a certain rough evening in March.

A loud cry roused him with a start, just where London begins, and he
descried a man extended in an apparently lifeless state wounded upon the
pathway, and, hovering round him, another person, with a torch in his
hand, which he waved in the air with a wild impatience.

"What's here to do?" said the old locksmith. "How's this? What, Barnaby!
You know me, Barnaby?"

The bearer of the torch nodded, not once or twice, but a score of times,
with a fantastic exaggeration.

"How came it here?" demande