d my ship without a
soul having a suspicion of what had passed. That night I made up the
packet for Sarah Cushing, and next day I sent it from Belfast.

[Illustration]

"There you have the whole truth of it. You can hang me, or do what you
like with me, but you cannot punish me as I have been punished already.
I cannot shut my eyes but I see those two faces staring at me--staring
at me as they stared when my boat broke through the haze. I killed them
quick, but they are killing me slow; and if I have another night of it I
shall be either mad or dead before morning. You won't put me alone into
a cell, sir? For pity's sake don't, and may you be treated in your day
of agony as you treat me now."

* * * * *

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes, solemnly, as he laid
down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and
violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is
ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great
standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an
answer as ever."

_Types of English Beauty._

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX. BASSANO, OLD BOND STREET, W.

[Illustration: MISS LEE.

MISS MENCE.

MISS HAYTER.]

[Illustration: THE COUNTESS OF ANNESLEY.]

[Illustration: THE MISSES HATHAWAY. (TWINS).]

PECULIAR PLAYING CARDS.

By George Clulow.

[Illustration: 'BEHOLD FOVR KINGS IN MAIESTY REVERED'

Pope]

'What's on the cards?' A question common enough when the actual
knowledge of the moment does not afford a positive answer; a question,
too, which has an origin taking us back to the earliest use of playing
cards. But to how many of those to whom playing cards as a means of
recreation are familiar is it known what _may_ be found on the cards?
Yet upon these "bits of painted cardboard" there has been expended a
greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic effort than is to be found
in any other form of popular amusement. Pope's charming epic, "The Rape
of the Lock," gives us, in poetic form, a description of the faces of
the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:--

"Behold four kings in majesty revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads and halberds in their