, all head and tail, which does
duty on an old dismantled Gothic building, once called "The Brotherhood
Hall" (it belonged to the fraternity of Corpus Christi, about 1422, and
was suppressed in 1547), then afterwards used as a grammar school, and
now--tell it not in Gath!--a hop store; or, lastly, the
ponderous-looking elephant, painted a sickly blue, if I remember
rightly, on a great building on the banks of the Medway.

[Illustration: In Museum. Maidstone

W. Hogg. 1892.]

[Illustration: On Observatory. Maidstone

W. Hogg. 1892.]

These rambling notes but touch the fringe--as it were--of a wide and
ever-widening subject. A lengthy paper might be written on the different
types (and some of great interest) of vanes in and around London alone;
but I trust I may be allowed to express the hope that what has been said
may haply enlist further interest in these silent, faithful, but
somewhat neglected friends of ours, who, "courted by all the winds that
hold them play," look down from their "coigne of vantage" upon the
hurrying world below.

[Illustration]

A DARK TRANSACTION

BY MARIANNE KENT.

If had described myself when I first started in life, it would simply
have been as John Blount, commercial traveller. I was employed by a firm
of merchants of very high standing, who only did business with large
houses. My negotiations took me to all parts of the United Kingdom, and
I enjoyed the life, which was full of change and activity. At least I
enjoyed it in my early bachelor days, but while I was still quite
young--not more than five-and-twenty--I fell in love and married; and
then I found that my roving existence was certainly a drawback to
domestic happiness. My wife, Mary, was a bright little creature, always
ready to make the best of things, but even she would declare
pathetically that she might as well have married a sailor as a landsman
who was so seldom at home! Still, as I said, she was one to put a bright
face on things, and she and my sister made their home together.

It was in the second year after my marriage, when I had been away on my
travels for some weeks, that I heard from my sister that a fever had
broken out in the neighbourhood of our home, and that Mary was down with
it. Kitty wrote hopefully, saying it was a mild attack, and she trusted
by the time I was home her patient would be quite convalescent. I had
unbounded faith in Kitty, so that I accepted her cheerful view of
things. But,