pty stalls and cobweb-hung
rafters. Yet one ghost from out the golden age haunted the place
still--a lean, withered, bandy-legged, little stick of a man, arrayed
in frayed and tarnished splendour of sky-blue waist-jacket, silver
lace, and jack-boots of which the soles and upper leathers threatened
speedy and final divorce. In all weathers this bit of human
wreckage--Jackie Deeds by name--might be seen wandering aimlessly about
the vacant yard, or seated upon the bench beside the portico of the
silent, bow-windowed inn, pulling at a, too often empty, clay-pipe and
spitting automatically.

Over Richard, tender-hearted as yet towards all creatures whom nature
or fortune had treated cavalierly, the decrepit postboy exercised a
fascination. One day, when driving through the Row with Mary Cathcart,
he had succeeded in establishing relations with Jackie Deeds through
the medium of a half-crown. And now, as he waited beneath the rustling
sycamores, it was with a sensation of quick, yet half-shy, pleasure,
that he saw the disreputable figure lurch out of the inn yard, stand
for a minute shading eyes with hand while making observations, and then
hobble across the street, touching the peak of a battered, black-velvet
cap as it advanced.

"Be 'e come to zee the show, sir?" the old man coughed out, peering
with dim, blear eyes up into the boy's fresh face.

"No, we've come about something from Appleyard's. I--I didn't know
there was a show."

"Oh! bain't there though, Sir Richard! I tell 'e there be a prime sight
of a show. There be monkeys down town, and dorgs what dances on their
'inder legs, and gurt iron cages chock full er wild beastises, by what
they tells me."

Dickie, feeling anxiously in his pockets for some coin of sufficient
size to be worthy of Mr. Deeds' acceptance, ejaculated involuntarily:--"Oh!
are there? I'd give anything to see them."

"Sixpence 'ud do most er they 'ere shows, I expect. The wild beastises
'ud run into a shilling may be."--The old postboy made a joyless,
creaking sound, bearing but slightest affinity to laughter. "But you
'ud see your way round more'n a shilling, Sir Richard. A terrible,
rich, young gentleman, by what they tells me."

Something a trifle malicious obtained in this attempt at jocosity,
causing Dickie to bend down rather hastily over the wheel, and thrust
his offering into the crumpled, shaky hands.

"There," he said. "Oh! it's nothing. I'm so pleased you--you don't
mind. Wh