escribed the experiment. A knowledge of these and other
deep things, and of the laws that govern them, has enabled Sir William
Thomson and Mr Cromwell F. Varley to expedite the transmission of
messages through very long submarine cables in an enormous degree. Then
the aurora borealis was illustrated by a large long exhausted tube--"

"I say, Sam," interrupted Rik, "don't you think there's just a
possibility of our becoming a large long-exhausted company if you don't
bring this interesting lecture to a close?"

"Shame! shame! uncle Rik," cried Robin.

As the rest of the company sided with him, the captain had to give way,
and Sam went on.

"I won't try your patience much longer; in fact I have nearly come to an
end. In this long exhausted tube, ten feet in length and three inches
in diameter, a brilliant and beautiful crimson stream was produced, by
means of an induction coil. In short, the occasion and, the proceedings
altogether, made it the most interesting evening I have ever spent in my
life, e-except--"

Sam paused abruptly, and looked at Madge. Madge blushed and looked down
under the table,--presumably for the cat,--and the rest of the company
burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, in which condition we will
leave them and convey the reader to a very different though not less
interesting scene.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

DESCRIBES A HAPPY HOME AND A HAPPIER MEETING.

In a small wayside cottage in the outskirts of one of those picturesque
villages which surround London, an old woman sat at the head of a small
deal table, with a black teapot, a brown sugar-basin, a yellow milk jug,
and a cracked tea-cup before her.

At the foot of the same table sat a young man, with a large knife in one
hand, a huge loaf of bread in the other, and a mass of yellow butter in
a blue plate in front of him.

The young man was James Slagg; the old woman was his mother. Jim had no
brothers or sisters, and his father chanced to be absent at market, so
he had the "old lady" all to himself.

"Well, well, Jim," said Mrs Slagg, with a loving look at her son's
flushed face, "you've told me a heap o' wonderful tales about
telegrumphs, an' tigers, an' electricity an' what not. If you was as
great a liar as you was used to be, Jim, I tell 'ee plain, lad, I
wouldn't believe one word on it. But you're a better boy than you was,
Jim, an' I do believe you--indeed I do, though I must confess that some
on it is hard to swallow."