op of a chest of
drawers. One holds the ball against the criminal's shoulders, another
cuts it off with a wooden knife, a basket receives it below, then one of
them takes it out, and, holding it aloft shouts `Behold the head of a
traitor!' It seems that four criminals had been safely decapitated, and
Dolly was being led to the fatal block, when she slipped her foot and
fell to the ground, overturning Harry and a chair in her descent. That
was all."

"Not hurt, I hope?"

"Oh no! They never get hurt--seriously hurt, I mean. As to
black-and-blue shins, scratches, cuts, and bumps, they may be said to
exist in a perpetually maimed condition."

"Strange!" said I musingly, "that they should like to play at such a
disagreeable subject."

"Disagreeable!" exclaimed my friend, "pooh! that's nothing. You should
see them playing at the horrors of the Inquisition. My poor wife
sometimes shudders at the idea that we have been gifted with five
monsters of cruelty, but any one can see with half an eye that it is a
fine sense of the propriety of retributive justice that influences
them."

"Any one who chooses to go and look at the five innocent faces when they
are asleep," said I, laughing, "can see with a _quarter_ of an eye that
you and Mrs McTougall are to be congratulated on the nature of your
little ones."

"Of course we are, my dear fellow," returned the doctor with enthusiasm.
"But--to change the subject--has little Slidder been here to-day?"

"Not that I know of."

"Ah! there he is" said the doctor, as, at that instant, the door-bell
rang; "there is insolence in the very tone of his ring. He has pulled
the visitor's bell, too, and there goes the knocker! Of all the imps
that walk, a London street-boy is--" The sentence was cut short by the
opening of the door and the entrance of my little _protege_. He had
evidently got himself up for the occasion, for his shoeblack uniform had
been well brushed, his hands and face severely washed, and his hair
plastered well down with soap-and-water.

"Come in, Slidder--that's your name, isn't it?" said the doctor.

"It is, sir--Robin Slidder, at your sarvice," replied the urchin, giving
me a familiar nod. "'Ope your leg ain't so cranky as it wos, sir.
Gittin' all square, eh?"

I repressed a smile with difficulty as I replied--"It is much better,
thank you. Attend to what Dr McTougall has to say to you."

"Hall serene," he replied, looking with cool urbanity in the do