sition. About his love for Car'line
he maintained a rigid silence. No doubt he often thought of her; but
being always occupied, and having no relations at Stickleford, he held no
communication with that part of the country, and showed no desire to
return. In his quiet lodging in Lambeth he moved about after working-
hours with the facility of a woman, doing his own cooking, attending to
his stocking-heels, and shaping himself by degrees to a life-long
bachelorhood. For this conduct one is bound to advance the canonical
reason that time could not efface from his heart the image of little
Car'line Aspent--and it may be in part true; but there was also the
inference that his was a nature not greatly dependent upon the
ministrations of the other sex for its comforts.

The fourth year of his residence as a mechanic in London was the year of
the Hyde-Park Exhibition already mentioned, and at the construction of
this huge glass-house, then unexampled in the world's history, he worked
daily. It was an era of great hope and activity among the nations and
industries. Though Hipcroft was, in his small way, a central man in the
movement, he plodded on with his usual outward placidity. Yet for him,
too, the year was destined to have its surprises, for when the bustle of
getting the building ready for the opening day was past, the ceremonies
had been witnessed, and people were flocking thither from all parts of
the globe, he received a letter from Car'line. Till that day the silence
of four years between himself and Stickleford had never been broken.

She informed her old lover, in an uncertain penmanship which suggested a
trembling hand, of the trouble she had been put to in ascertaining his
address, and then broached the subject which had prompted her to write.
Four years ago, she said with the greatest delicacy of which she was
capable, she had been so foolish as to refuse him. Her wilful
wrong-headedness had since been a grief to her many times, and of late
particularly. As for Mr. Ollamoor, he had been absent almost as long as
Ned--she did not know where. She would gladly marry Ned now if he were
to ask her again, and be a tender little wife to him till her life's end.

A tide of warm feeling must have surged through Ned Hipcroft's frame on
receipt of this news, if we may judge by the issue. Unquestionably he
loved her still, even if not to the exclusion of every other happiness.
This from his Car'line, she who had