into their hands. Lastly rose M. T. Elated beyond all consideration of pruRattler, Esq. M.P., who would have been dence, and thirsting only for the repetition received with greater applause had not the of the cheers which intoxicated him, he listeners tired both hands and legs in their related, in passionate terms, and with vioprevious demonstrations of satisfaction. lent gesticulation, how infuriated he had But Mr. Rattler was a claptrap orator, been "to learn that some of these men had who knew what he was about; so stretch- dared with polluting footsteps again to deing forth his hand to deprecate the applause secrate their native shores." A yell of inhe knew he could not then expect, he dignation rose in answer to the announcecommenced speaking in a very humble ment, but the speaker heeded not the storm manner and low tone, explaining that the he was raising, nor thought how he should resolution he was about to propose re-exorcise the fiend his sorcery had raised. quired no comment, and would, he was "Oh!" he cried, with the same exaggesure, be carried unanimously. The reso- rated action, "the very heavens will cry lution consisted of a vote of thanks to the out for vengeance if the earth denies it, or Committee for their invaluable services, with man refuses the avenging of this wrong. a suggestion that a voluntary contribution If you love honour-if you despise not from every person should be paid at the honesty-if you love your wives-if you door towards the expenses they had in-have not forgotten your poverty-stricken curred; the motion, moreover, went on to state, that the meeting was "filled with the deepest indignation" against the persons impugned in the statements of Messrs. Byles, Chaplain, and Oakleigh, and in the parliamentary report. The first portion of the proposition, being unsuited to Mr. Rattler's style of speaking, was, much to the discomfiture of the committee, briefly dismissed; while the latter, the speaker conceived, afforded scope for what he called "sledge-hammer eloquence." The last sentence he read twice, laying especial emphasis on the words, "filled with the deepest indignation." Speaking with great volubility, and encouraged by the increasing applause of an attentive audience, he dwelt in strong terms upon the villany by which the shareholders had been deluded, and the scenes of distress which had resulted from the ruin of the project. For the sake of The daylight was beginning to fade over effect, he insinuated that Parker had been a the great city, and lights here and there deluded young man, who had lost his life might be seen to shine out from the long lowbecause he was too honest for those with browed shops, whose plodding denizens and whom he had the misfortune to be associ- busy customers were attracted from their ated, and that his death was not to be attri- peaceful occupations by the unusual sounds buted to Meanwell alone. Knowing that which were heard, and the sight of the large assemblies, in moments of excite- great concourse of people who were rushment, are willing to believe anything that ing along the streets. Where there was points in the same direction as their pas- time to do it, the shutters of the windows sions, and fired by the applause which now were put up, and the proprietors and their rang loud and frequent, he branded Mean- assistants stood about their doors in readiwell as the hired assassin employed by ness to use locks, bolts, and bars, in case others whom he would not name. Each of a threatened outrage. But the shopsentence was vociferously applauded, and keepers had no cause to fear. The crowd exit than once the assembly became so poured along, actuated by a single dread

homes-if you regard your children, and have not ceased to be mindful of their blasted hopes-if you are men, and not cowards-rise and take summary means for the punishment of the wretches who do not even deserve so slight a punishment as the heaviest which the law allows!"

With the suddenness of an electric shock a demon seemed to take possession of the people.

excited

"To Marton Fields!" shouted one. "To Marton Fields!" responded the excited shareholders.

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voice.

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To Bamford's house!" yelled a hoarse

Revenge!" howled a hundred in return, as a general press was immediately made to the door, through which the maddened crowd rushed forth in the direction of Marton Fields, with cries of vengeance as they went.

they rose en masse and cheered. | ful desire, and turned neither to the right

through courts where squalid infants live and die with sunshine never on their ashy lips, he flies: adown the crowded alley, through atmospheres of tobacco smoke, where the gaudy spirit-shop beneath its flaring lights dispenses its poison for body and soul, and sends its delirious votaries to the darkly calling river or the felon's cell

as if for life. Once only, as he turns into a great mainroad that leads towards the country, he pauses, and looking back along the broad way, listens; but it is for a moment only: again his supple black figure, like a flying imp, bends itself to the road, and with quick feet flies awaytowards Marton Fields.

or left, for any purpose on its way. Cheering and shouting as they ran forwards, they gained new adherents as they advanced; for the dishonest and worthless, who had nothing to lose, poured forth from obscure passages and cellars, and yelling echoed the shoutings, with murderous threats and execrations. By such wretches as these the angry and insane enthusiasm was sustained,-away he runs with hot impetuous haste, when its first originators might have grown tired, or paused to think. The fury was infectious. As the human cataract roared along, many, moreover, who joined the procession as curious spectators merely, were carried away by the shouts and rushing noise of that flood of men, and became drunk with the excitement of the scene. Thus, some who in their sober moments would have been severe in their condemnation of any popular disturbance, anon found themselves active participators in the thirst for mischief and destruction. The impulses of men are strangely active and susceptible for good or ill when they congregate in masses; and human beings, encouraged by each other under such circumstances, can be led on to deeds from which they as individuals would have shrunk with fear and abhorrence. And thus it was.

Foremost in that speeding mass was the man Barney. A piece of crape was fastened under his hat, and half covered his face, which he seemed cautious enough to keep in the shade, while he waved a piece of pitchy wood as a torch above his head. Unlike many of the madmen who followed him and echoed his yells, Barney had, however, no particular revengeful purpose in view; but simply followed what he considered his regular business, the despoiling of every body, and the destruction of everything, as the punishment due to society for his neglected education, and the wrongs of his scorned poverty. With Barney and a few more equally reckless leader the mob held on its way at a quick pace toward the north-east suburb of London, beyond which lay Marton Fields, where, surrounded by beautiful gardens, was Bamford's house.

Who runs along the by-streets and back lanes in the same direction? Now in light, now lost in shadow, a supple figure whirls away. In the premature darkness of the narrow thoroughfares, where the brown smoke toys with the breath of fever, that black shadow flits:

In a large upstairs room, where dusty books looked with discontented faces from their neglected shelves, and mourned that they, the teachers of mankind, should be doomed to uselessness in their ostentatious prison, sat two persons, with decanters and wine-glasses upon a table before them. The volumes in their glass cases, as they leaned and lolled against each other in the very tiresomeness of having nothing to do, seemed like their owner and his friend, who appeared wearied beyond measure.

The room had little furniture in it, and what there was bore marks of neglect. The shutters were closed, though daylight yet lingered faintly about the western sky; and the candles, to judge by their flickering low in the sockets, must have been burning for several hours.

Each of the persons frequently emptied and refilled his glass; but for a long while not a word was spoken. After a time, however, the elder removed his legs from the chair upon which they were laid, and with a little indistinctness in his articulation, produced by the wine he had taken, he said: "I cannot think what you could have been about to let Capel know that the sale of the mercery business had not been completed."

"He found no mention of the matter in Meanwell's papers," lazily answered the other. "He could have made nothing of my letters if it had not been for that confoundedly stupid mistake of yours."

"It was your mistake as much as mine, Billing," replied the first speaker with a scowl, swallowing another draught of wine, and refilling his glass.

"Well, that is not unlike you, Bamford," | as it suddenly hammered the door, seemed said Billing with a bitter sneer, which to strike terror into Bamford's heart, for lighted up a flash of fury in the eyes of although he attempted to speak more than his companion. "Did I pack up Mean- once, several seconds passed before he made well's papers, or did you? You know you himself heard. Having recovered in some did, and that you were so drunk that you measure his composure, he said, in a feigned included the letters which had passed be- voice, "Who's there?" tween ourselves upon the subject, and which showed us to be a pair of knaves; while the folly of the act proved that one of us, at least, was a-a- not quite so cautious as rogues have need to be."

With an oath the older and more powerful of the two sprang upon the other, just as he was raising his glass to his lips, and smashed it to atoms against his yellow teeth. Billing was knocked backwards with his chair to the floor, but sprang up in a moment, and, more agile than Bamford, had his long fingers about the throat of his antagonist. Inflamed with wine, a brutal fight ensued. Glasses, decanters, and chairs were broken in the fray, in which the two men attacked each other more like beasts of prey than human beings. The violence of their rage, however, was too great for their physical powers, and they presently paused in their battle-each watching the other with murderous looks, that gave their blood bedaubed faces a demoniacal ugliness.

As they paused, a hard knocking at the door and a violent ringing of the bell sounded from below. The men stood aghast, motionless as statues, and tried to smother the sounds of their panting breath.

"It's me- -Capel," replied the person outside; "let me in, there's not a moment to lose."

"What do you want?" inquired the party within, in the same assumed voice.

"I have come to save Mr. Bamford and his friend Mr. Billing," replied the visitor. "They'll be murdered if you don't let me in.”

"Let him in," said Billing, from the end of the passage.

The bolts were drawn back, and the black snake-like figure of Mr. Capel wormed itself through the door, before it was yet opened wide enough to admit a less elastic mortal.

"Fasten the door," said Mr. Meanwell's quondam clerk; "a mob are on their road hither, and I alone-oh, I see, I am speaking to Mr. Bamford himself. Fasten the door, and let us have a light. Quick!"

"Straight on, up the stairs," said Bamford, fastening the locks and bolts of the door. "The fire will give you light enough to talk."

There was a consultation in the library. It was conducted in hurried whispers. Mr. Capel explained that a mob was on its way to the house, to burn it and murder its inmates-declared that his popularity with the people alone could prevent the depre"We are discovered," whispered Bam-dation-and then, producing some memoford; "we were seen at Southampton." "They have heard us just now," gasped Billing.

The knocking and ringing was repeated, but the men stood still as marble, while the blood trickled down their haggard faces. Again and again the knocker beat the door. The lights were extinguished, and the men descended noiselessly into the hall.

The knocker shook the house, and the bell rang louder than before. The men felt for each other in the dark, and Billing whispered into Bamford's ear. The latter then took a large coat-his travelling disguise, from the banisters, and buttoned himself up in it. Having concealed his face also in a deep fur cap, he went to the door softly, while Billing slunk away from the passage. The sharp raps of the knocker,

randa from his pocket, he demanded Bamford's signature to a document which was read by the firelight.

Just then a roar, like the distant baying of a troop of wolves, came upon their ears.

"Another moment and it will be too late," said Capel, pointing to the paper. "Sign it, or you are lost."

"Sign it, and give him the papers," said Billing, panic-struck.

Capel was about to speak again, when the crashing of the windows of the room in which they were checked him. Bamford rushed to a leathern desk upon the table, gave out a handful of papers, and taking up a pen scrawled his signature upon the document to which allusion has been made. Capel snatched up the papers, and grinning with triumph in the dark, skipped down

the staircase, as a fresh volley of stones Peals of merciless laughter, and blasphethreatened to break in the shutters of the mous execrations, rose, as the mass of firewindows. With a natural facility, the ser-lighted faces, with grim expectancy, turned pent-like figure pulled back the bolts, towards the roof of the building, whither a unfastened the bar, and as Barney pressed man in great apparent agony had crawled in at the door, shouted aloud, "The villains to escape the flames and smoke, and stood are up-stairs!" writhing upon the parapet. His dress was burned, and his hair appeared to be smoking with the heat in dreadful proximity. Though his face was begrimed, and bloody, and distorted, the light of the fire revealed his lineaments with strange distinctness; there could be no mistaking the figure either-it was Bamford! He had hardly gained the stone coping of the parapet, when the roof, within which he had been but now concealed, fell in behind him with a heavy crashing sound that shook the earth, and was heard like thunder for miles away. The noise drowned the shrieking

The deluded men heard the words upon the landing of the staircase, and knew that they had been duped - that their lives were at stake and that not an instant was to be lost. "To the roof!" said Bamford, as he sprang up the dark flight of stairs above and disappeared, leaving his friend to follow as he could.

A rush, a yell of fury, a struggling cry for help within, an irregular tramping of a thousand feet without, and, far away, the vindictive shoutings of a vengeful mob, are heard the moment afterwards. Flaring torches pass and repass the broken win-life-cry of the terrified man, around whose dows, and sounds of breaking, and destruction, and mischief, come from all parts of the building. Cries of disappointment in failing to discover some one whom they sought are heard, and a voice, resembling that of Barney, screams from the staircase, "Let nivir a sowl pass out the doo-ur!"

A few minutes of confusion and mad excitement passed, and then, with the sharpness of a poniard, the cry of "Fire! Fire! Fire!" struck upon the ear, while many of the rioters rushed forth. Others, more daring, opened the windows, and cast books, and such furniture as there was to be found, to their fellows without, who set them on fire in heaps, and danced like red savages in hellish joy around the ruin and devastation they were working. A lurid glow, from cellar to attic, shows that the work of destruction has begun inside the building. Smoke curls in wreaths from the windows and roof, and calls forth the cheers of the insane populace. The red light grows stronger. The gilded cornices, and richly-papered walls, are seen through the glassless casements, as if the sunshine was upon them. No shadows now pass and repass the windows, which presently vomit forth flames and smoke in frightful cataracts, roaring and crackling, and streaming up to the blood-red sky.

"See yonder!" shouted several of the mob, pausing for a moment in their destruction of the flowers and evergreens, "there he is upon the tiles!"

singeing body the flames, like red snakes, flickered and crawled. Burning flakes of fire whirled around him, and his figure assumed an unnatural size as it stood in strong contrast against the flames which roared up behind it. For another second he staggered in agony, and then seemed to decide to trust rather to the fury of the populace, than to the certain and immediate destruction by the fire. Any death was less horrible than that; and he looked over the parapet with the evident intention of jumping down. At the moment a volley of large stones and bricks was hurled with fiendish vindictiveness at the wretched object of popular fury. One of them struck him, and with a piercing shriek of horrible fear, that never was forgotten even by the diabolical hearts which heard it, he fell back into the burning confusion behind him.

The flames had done their worst; a handsome building was in ruins,—a blackened scene of devastation. As the night came on, the crackling and roaring died away. A conflict took place between the constables and the rioters, which ended in the defeat of the former, and the destruction of the fire-engines. A rumour, nevertheless, of the approach of a military force, later in the night, produced a panic, and dispersed the satiated and wearied mob, who left the red embers and smoking ruins, alone in the trampled and desolate garden.

(Continued at page 123.).