nce of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one
of our schoolfellows whom we neither of us loved.

Then for a chapter or two there was some very active police play,
interspersed with a few love scenes between the hero and heroine, who--
though it never occurred to us at the time--must have enjoyed
independent means, which made it quite unnecessary for them to follow
the ordinary avocations of organ-grinders.

About the thirty-fifth chapter there was to be a sudden drawing-in of
threads from all quarters.

Sub-Chapter thirty-sixth was to be devoted to Sarah in the condemned
cell.

Thirty-seventh--Alicia discovers her name by seeing it marked on a
pocket-handkerchief she had been using at the time she was stolen.

Sub-Chapter thirty-eighth--The hero discovers his name by being told it
by a solicitor who has known all about it all the time.

Sub-Chapter thirty-ninth--All comes right; everybody goes back to their
mothers and fathers, and a quiet wedding ensues.

Sub-Chapter forty--Execution of Sarah. Finis.

We were tired and hungry by the time our paper was full, but we were
jubilant all the same.

"Stunning fine plot!" said Harry. "If we only work it out it ought to
be as good as _Nicholas Nickleby_."

"Rather! By the way, we ought to have one or two funny chaps in it to
work off some of our jokes. There's that one about the sculptor dying a
horrid death, you know--because he makes faces and busts! I'd like to
get that in somehow."

"All serene! That might come in in the last chapters. I've got the
_Family Jest-Book_ at home; we might pick a few things out of that, and
then settle where they come in, and work in for them as we go on."

We accordingly made a judicious selection, and having marked the
initials of the character who was to bring them in against each, and
also the number of the chapter in which they were to "come on," we
really felt as if everything was now ready for our venture.

We went to bed early, so as to get a good night and arise fresh to our
work, not, however, before we had made an expedition to the stationer's
and expended half a crown in manuscript paper, J and D pens, blotting-
paper, blue-black ink, and forty small paper-fasteners.

These provided, and the servant being particularly charged to call us at
five o'clock, we retired to rest, and slept with our "skeleton" under
the pillow.

Sub-Chapter II.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

A grave question arose the moment we