almost passionate, protestations of the deputation from
Birmingham that waited upon him, he withdrew his candidature,
sacrificing himself and his prospects on the party shrine.

Now, Lord Randolph, travelling on other less independent and less
interesting lines, seems half inclined to make his way back.

* * * * *

_NOTE._--"_PICTURES AND PAINTERS OF 1893," an Illustrated Guide to the
Royal Academy and the other chief picture exhibitions, being the Fine
Art Supplement of "THE STRAND MAGAZINE" and "THE PICTURE MAGAZINE," and
containing 112 pages of pictures, with portraits of artists, beautifully
reproduced on tinted papers in a variety of colours, will be published
as early as possible in May. Price 1s._

_At Dead of Night._

BY MRS. NEWMAN.

The one afternoon train was due at Middleford, a small, straggling, and
not very prosperous town, where terminated a branch line from a junction
on the South-Western Railway--a line for which, after long-protracted
opposition and delay, a grant had been obtained too late, traffic having
merged in the direction of a neighbouring place.

"Middleford! Middleford!"

As the train drew up at the platform, one passenger only, a young man of
about eight or nine and twenty, stepped out and stood for a few moments
looking about him as if in some uncertainty. He was, in fact, debating
with himself as to whether he would, after all, pay the chance visit he
had gone there to make.

He had not gone by invitation other than was conveyed in the words:
"Don't forget to look me up, if you chance to be anywhere in our
neighbourhood, Meredith," spoken by a young fellow between whom and
himself there had been some degree of intimacy at the University, as the
two parted to go their different ways. The usual words, not generally
estimated above their value; and the idea of acting upon them had not
occurred to Allan Meredith until he found himself stranded for some
hours at the junction, and, turning over the leaves of Bradshaw, came
upon the name of Middleford, and remembered that it was Laurence
Verschoyle's place. Finding that it was not more than five or six miles
from the junction, and that the train was just starting, he had, on the
impulse of the moment, taken a ticket and jumped in.

He stood for another moment or two still hesitating, little imagining
the influence his decision would have on his future life, and unable to
account for his irresol