many of our old local industries have fallen into decay.

Another matter to which our provincial museums might most profitably devote themselves is the collection of old-time domestic appliances and utensils: these varied to a remarkable degree in different parts of England, in material and shape. Take so commonplace an item as the jug: an expert in those articles can tell at once in what district it was made and assign to it the period of its making. In some parts of the country leather jugs were in regular use; in others, wooden vessels built up in pieces bound together with hoops. The local pottery of England is a study in itself. Then there are those appliances which were common to all the country, but are not for that reason less well worth preservation in the museum .of the county where they have been found. Some of these things, once familiar in every cottage, are gone so long and so completely out of use that few persons living know what they are.

A friend of mine, some little time since, was going over an old house in a quiet part of Surrey, where a sale was about to take place. Among the objects catalogued were two wooden pedestals, each carrying an iron implement resembling a long and narrow pair of pincers. That they had puzzled the auctioneer who compiled the catalogue was evident, for he had grouped them with some other small matters as "et cetera." My friend found his companions debating the use of the appliances, and he, having some knowledge of these matters, was able to explain that the articles were rushlight holders, the predecessors of the modern candlestick, which would have been useless to uphold the limp and slender rushlight of a past age.

Let our local museums, then, devote their funds and their space.to exhibits of local interest. The strange and ill

assorted "collection" made by some resident during his travels in Africa or his service in India, and bestowed upon the museum not infrequently because the owner has no room to house it himself, is entirely out of place there.

The system under which selections of pictures, sculpture, and other objects of art are sent out from the national collections to be exhibited for a time in provincial towns has been in vogue for some years, and it goes far to relieve the local museum from the necessity for attempting to form such a collection for itself.

The Museums Association, founded in 1888, is a body which has done much useful work without ostentation, and with little notice from the public at large. Among its objects are-to secure the better and more systematic working of museums throughout the kingdom; to promote the interchange of duplicates and surplus specimens; to secure models and casts; to prepare loan collections of an educational character for circulation among schools; to promote lectures to working men; and to secure a uniform plan of arranging natural history collections.

I have not given the full list of objects, but those mentioned serve to show the nature of the work to which the Association has set its hands; more especially I wish to draw attention to the preparation of loan collections for educational purposes. This scheme is one which appears to me deserving of the greatest encouragement and assistance. It is a practical endeavor to turn to the best account the educational possibilities of the museum, and bring them within reach of the young in a manner which will enable them to profit thereby.

At the same time, masters of private schools in our provincial towns may well consider whether they cannot make use of such museums as the

week (Fourth Day, you call it, don't ye?). They shall have orders to enter the first floor front. Am I right? I thank ye." Hippisley had smilingly nodded. "The amount, with their charges, will be five thirteen nine, a monstrous sum, I admit; but 'tis your own obduracy that piles it up. But we won't go into that

"I thank thee, friend, for the forbearance!”

"Ironical, as usual, Mr. Hippisley. But, to these arrangements-can we? -shall I?"

"I will leave thee with my clerk presently," said Hippisley, who knew that between Jasper and the rector a perfect understanding subsisted, and that the raiders would find a bag containing the precise sum required upon the table of the first room which they entered.

"Nay, do not rise, unless indeed thou art pressed for time, and I think I am the only one of our people in thy parish. I desire thy advice"

"Indeed?" The visitor was all polite attention and solicitude; advice!-this was a new departure. "I shall be most happy to place my poor abilities at your service."

"Thou hast possibly heard of the recent additions to my household."

The rector nodded non-committally, he had heard-reports, most of which he had frankly disbelieved. He was no busybody; he trusted his old neighbor, and whilst feeling bound to deplore his prospects in the life to come. would have gone bail for his good behavior in this to any amount whatever.

Thus encouraged, Hippisley unfolded the story of Susan's marriage. He told it slowly, accurately, and without comment or embellishment. The rector heard him to the end, steadyeyed, an excellent listener (which is more than can be said for some of his cloth).

"Poor child!" he murmured, when the tale came to an end; he had met her in the lane twice or thrice, and. like everyone else, had been struck by her beauty, her grace, and modesty.

"Is she married?" asked Hippisley, coming to the point.

"That depends upon whether the person who read the service was in orders," replied the rector, nursing his knee. "Irregularities of time, and so forth, are really immaterial; the honest intention goes for something (not for everything, as you Quakers have had occasion to know; it took an Act of Parliament to legalize your marital relations)." Hippisley nodded. "But the Church has never been extreme in the matter-has always leaned to the protection of the woman and her offspring. A ceremony otherwise irregular, if performed in facie ecclesia would hold good, even if violence were employed, as in these Irish abductions. But you don't allege- -?"

"There was no violence. And I cannot say whether the officiating clerk was in orders or no. This paper is all we have to go upon."

"It is just possible that I may be able to ascertain that for you; it seems material, very material. Oct.-that will be Octavius, doubtless, Baskett. I wonder if the name be assumed or real? M.A. That is a clue. We will try to trace him through his university."

"My friend Thomas Furley has identified the house." said Hippisley, "between the Saracen's Head and Martin Outwich, but Camomile Street is not in thy parish”

"Immaterial. If he will furnish me with the address, or, better still, accompany me, I will try what I can get from this woman. And, now, as you are obviously busy" the rector got his heels under him and arose, extending his hand, "and, whilst I think of it, that exhortation to follow bishops

and pastors occurs in Ignatius to the Smyrnæans."

"It does; in that disputable last chapter. Did it come to thee too after our chat? But thou wilt do well not to rest too much upon it."

"You consider it an interpolation?" "There is a suspiciously late construction, and, at best, it is unapostolic in feeling (written at a time when church organization was changing). and plainly with a bias; the writer holds a brief for the New, which was ousting the Old."

"Eh? How so? I really fail"Episkopos-originally a secular office, and quite secondary, as I read it, created to relieve the travelling evangelist from detail, and give him more liberty was beginning to usurp the apostolic authority."

"So? You will be telling me that the coadjutor (chancellor, rather, the man upon the spot who kept the purse) outgrew his ordinary?"

"Who must have been often absent, on the road, or in hiding, or in prison." : "Plausible, but unproven, Mr. Hippisley. I should like to see your data. But, whatever the origin of the change, the Church sanctioned it."

"Condoned it, and much beside-persecution"

"Oh, you Friends! Do you never forgive?"—moving towards the door. "But I must be going. By the by, might I?-just a word with Mr. Tutty? And, whilst I think of it, send that rough-hewn proselyte of yours round to the rectory this evening. We may discover something. A hard case -a sad case!"

But the woman of the house in Camomile Street was by this time aware, and by dint of lapses of memory, impossible suggestions, and lying of the futile-obvious sort, defeated her interrogators by impressing the clergyman with the worthlessness of truth itself from such lips.

"This here's a-gettin' too hot-like," muttered the harridan as she watched them leave, her eye to a hole in the dirty blind, and, going upstairs, fetched and pawned the belongings left in her charge by Baskett.

Cambridge knew nothing of the man, but Oxford owned to having bestowed upon him her Bachelorship of Arts (not the Mastership of the signature). He had come up from Shrewsbury. Here was a clue worth following. The Rev. James Atcherley, M.A., Head of Shrewsbury School, had the name upon his books, and suggested reference to a certain Lord Duddingstone, who was reputed to have paid the school fees for the lad whilst in statu pupillari. The Rev. Eustace Tomlyn, now hot upon the scent, and reporting progress to Friend Hippisley whenever they met in the street, addressed a civil letter to my lord and took a rebuff.

As a matter of fact, the courteous request for information as to the clerical status of his late amanuensis came before the Viscount upon one of his bad days. The gout was holding him by his most sensitive toe; he had just had a terrific scene with the Hon. Frederick, who, being discovered up to his eyes in debt at Colchester, had been compelled to exchange into a regiment of the King's Hanoverians quartered at Gibraltar, and was by way of being shipped thither at short notice to escape worse. The wretch had wept and writhed upon the carpet, confessing to enormities that raised his unhappy father's gorge, and at length had been forcibly removed from the room and house, and put upon shipboard at Gravesend under arrest and with strictly empty pockets.

This was the March convoy, the one which rendezvoused in the Solent. Travis sailed by it, unknown to his old enemy, restored to his name and position, an ensign in the 12th Regiment

of Foot, but with letters which would ensure his being "lent" to the Garrison Artillery, a corps which stood in need of young officers of education and ingenuity. Hence the lad took with him the latest works in French, English, and German, and a head full of elevations, muzzle-velocities, burstingcharges, time-fuses, and the composition of powders and light balls, long and short chases, and whatever else was engaging the attention of the one scientific corps in the British Army of that day. Justin saw him off, not with empty pockets, and with more than a half promise to follow him, for Chester had been drawn blank, and Sue having been traced to London in company with a lady who was going to Gibraltar, and an Irish major who was believed to have been subsequently seen with her in the Park, and who was thought to have sailed for the Rock (although the name was a difficulty), it was conceivable that the lost girl might have drifted thither.

But why? and in what capacity? There were tragic possibilities about this, or any, theory of the poor child's disappearance, which the men dared not discuss with one another. She was but eighteen-think of it; and so utterly inexperienced. Her brother's face hardened and aged. He blamed himself. "She needed me. She must have written: whilst I-!" Justin hoped doggedly on.

In a word, every clue had failed them, nor did lavish offers of reward bring further information.

Gibraltar was the last hope. Travis was impatient to be gone.

That he, Justin assisting, had exhausted the potentialities before sailing, goes without saying. Their attempts to interest Miss Camilla Draycott in the quest had failed. That lady's attitude was inexplicable to her nephew, who knew nothing of the recognition in the Park, nor that the Rev.

Eustace Tomlyn had preceded him with unavailing appeals, and that her young kinsman's urgent requests for an interview were construed by the bitter little spinster as designs upon her pocket. Her door remained obdurately closed. She passes out of this story. Let us pity her. Of all sinners the loveless is the most certainly and severely punished.

Is this discursive? Possibly. the threads of this story are for the moment not so much entangled as windborne and dispersed. Let us catch, then, at my Lord Duddingstone in his character as a correspondent. The noble Viscount's (new) amanuensis, obviously writing under dictation, besought the Rev. E. Tomlyn to believe that his lordship rejoiced to attest the fact that the man Baskett was an ingrate scoundrel and a common thief, consistent to the last, in that having embezzled from his benefactor, he had since robbed the gallows by self-destruction.

His lordship further requested the Rev. E. Tomlyn to address him no further upon a subject at once painful and unsavory, and begged permission of the Rev. E. Tomlyn to subscribe himself his most obedient servant.

"Final, this? eh, Mr. Hippisley?" queried the clergyman, with a lifting eyebrow, showing the letter.

"He has not answered thy question." "In so many words? No. But his silence is probably inadvertent. I have ascertained that there is no Baskett in orders in this diocese, nor in the province of Canterbury."

"I thank thee, friend, for thy labors. There is no more to be done in the matter. It would seem that there was no legal marriage."

"No legal marriage," echoed the reetor mournfully. "Poor child! You are a kind friend to her, Hippisley, a very father. I wish I could think that ye