ICHARDS, IT'S ALL UP!"

"The busy crew the sails unbending,
The ship in harbour safe arrived;
Jack Oakum, all his perils ending,
Has made the port where Kitty lived."
DIBDIN.

We return now to the day before Sir Digby's ball.

Richards lived in chambers, and in no great state. He never cared for
it. Had you gone straight into his sitting-room from the fresh air, what
would have struck you most would have been the smell of strong tobacco
smoke; and I believe you would have come to the conclusion that the
principal furniture consisted of tobacco-pipes. They were of all sorts
and sizes, and hung in rows and racks, and lay on shelves and on the
mantlepiece. Well, what did it matter? honest Richards was a bachelor,
and not once in a blue moon did a lady look in to see him.

But one afternoon, shortly before Sir Digby's great ball, a lady did;
and that lady was Mary herself.

"Which I've been dying to see you, sir," she began.

"Sit down, my dear, sit down."

Mary sat down, and proceeded,--

"It's all up, Mr. Richards, it's all up!"

The poor girl was crying now bitterly.

"Missus is as good as sold. She's goin' to the ball, and Sir Digby's
goin' to propose. She told me, and Sir Digby kissed me and told me. Oh,
oh, what ever shall I do?"

Richards lit a huge pipe, and walked about smoking for fully five
minutes. Then he went over and took Mary's hand, and Mary looked up
innocently in his face, and said innocently through her tears,--

"Do you want to kiss me too, sir?"

"Well, I wasn't thinking about that; but there, Mary, there. Now, I'll
tell you what you've got to do; and I do believe it will all come right,
even yet."

So Mary and Richards had a long "confab" together, and she went back
home happy and smiling.

After she had gone Richards lit another pipe, threw himself on a
rocking-chair, and smoked long and thoughtfully. Then he got up and
took a rapid turn or two up and down the floor. Presently he paused, and
gazed curiously at himself in a mirror.

"Old Richards," he said, shaking his fist at his reflection, "I didn't
think it was in you. You're a designing, unscrupulous old lawyer. Never
mind; it's all for my baby's sake. I'll do it. Hang me if I don't."

An hour after this, Richards had called a carriage--a luxury he indulged
in very seldom indeed. He first visited the lawyer who had transacted
the business of the Grantley Hall mortgag