of the gentle talk of his ministering angel, which even from his lips
fell with a reflected sweetness on the trouble-tossed spirit of the
watcher.

Jeffreys had succeeded in getting a temporary job which took him away
during the next two days. But each night on his return he found his
invalid brighter and softened in spirit by reason of his angel's visits.

"She'll come to-morrow, John. There's magic in her, I tell you. I see
things I never saw before. You've been kind to me, John, and given up a
lot for me, but if you were to hear her--"

Here the dying youth could get no farther.

He seemed much the same in the morning when Jeffreys started for work.
The last words he said as his friend departed were--

"She's coming again to-day."

When Jeffreys came home in the evening the garret was silent, and on the
bed lay all that remained on earth of the poor wrecked life which had
been so strangely linked with his own.

As he stood over the lifeless body his eyes fell on a scrap of paper
lying on the pillow. It was folded and addressed in pencil, "To the
fellow-lodger."

Jeffreys caught it eagerly, and in a turmoil of agitation read the few
lines within.

"Your friend was not alone when he died, peacefully, this afternoon. He
left a message for you. `Tell him he was right when he told me I had a
chance. If it had not been for him I should have lost it.' He also
said, `Some day he may see mother and tell her about me. Tell her I
died better than I lived.' Dear friend, whose name I do not know, don't
lose heart. God is merciful, and will be your friend when every one
else is taken from you."

It was not the words of this touching little message from the dead which
brought a gasp to Jeffreys' throat and sent the colour from his cheeks
as he read it. The writing, hasty and agitated as it was, was a hand he
had seen before. He had in his pocket an envelope, well-worn now,
addressed to him months ago in the same writing, and as he held the two
side by side he knew Raby had written both.

He quitted the garret hurriedly, and entered the room of a family of
five who lived below him.

"Mrs Pratt," said he to the ragged woman who sat nursing her baby in
the corner, "did you see who Trimble had with him when he died?"

"He's dead, then, sir"--these fellow-lodgers of Jeffreys called him
"sir" in spite of his misery. "I knew that cough couldn't last. My
Annie's begun with it: she'll go too. It's been hard