ied a scene-shifter at Hanbridge Theatre. The atrocious idea of
being connected with the theatre had rendered him speechless for a
time. He could but endure it in the most awful silence that ever hid
passionate feeling. Then one day he had burst out, 'The wench is no
better than a tiddy-fol-lol!' Only this solitary phrase--nothing else.

What a tiddy-fol-lol was no one quite knew; but the word, getting about,
stuck to him, and for some weeks boys used to shout it after him in the
streets, until he caught one of them, and in thirty seconds put an end
to the practice. Thenceforth Miriam, with all hers, was dead to him.
When her husband expired of consumption, Eli Machin saw the avenging arm
of the Lord in action; and when her boy grew to be a source of painful
anxiety to her, he said to himself that the wrath of Heaven was not yet
cooled towards this impious daughter. The passage of fifteen years had
apparently in no way softened his resentment.

The challenged lad in Mynors' yard slowly approached the slip-house
door, and halted before Eli Machin, grinning.

'Well, young un,' the old man said absently, 'what dost want?'

'Tiddy-fol-lol, grandfeyther,' the child drawled in his silly,
irritating voice, and added: 'They said I darena say it to ye.'

Without and instant's hesitation Eli Machin raised his still powerful
arm, and, catching the boy under the ear, knocked him down. The other
boys yelled with unaffected pleasure and ran away.

'Get up, and be off wi' ye. Ye dunna belong to this bank,' said Eli
Machin in cold anger to the lad. But the lad did not stir; the lad's
eyes were closed, and he lay white on the stones.

Eli Machin bent down, and peered through his spectacles at the prone
form upon which the mid-day sun was beating.

'It's Miriam's boy!' he ejaculated under his breath, and looked round as
if in inquiry--the yard was empty. Then with quick decision he picked up
this limp and inconvenient parcel of humanity and hastened--ran--with it
out of the yard into the road.

Down the road he ran, turned to the left into Clowes Street, and stopped
before a row of small brown cottages. At the open door of one of these
cottages a woman sat sewing. She was rather stout and full-bosomed,
with a fair, fresh face, full of sense and peace; she looked under
thirty, but was older.

'Here's thy Tommy, Miriam,' said Eli Machin shortly. 'He give me some of
his sauce, and I doubt I've done him an injury.'

The woman dro