doubt the utter misery and ruin that must follow in its wake?

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How long this last ?" I ask the man. "Hour, hour half," he tells me, and takes it from my hand.

Poor man! Good-natured, simple-hearted, conscious of his own degradation, yet lost, irretrievably lost in hopeless thraldom! Pity

But, to return to the room, where the shouts are growing louder and more excited than ever. One peculiar arrangement in an angle of the wall attracts my eye, and leads me to solicit my companion's explanations. On a large flat stone, fitting exactly into the corner, stands a glass filled with oil, on the surface of which a lighted wick is floating. Around this glass are arranged two or three egg-cups, a vase, and a flower-pot. The eggcups are empty; but in the vase, wrapped in Chinese coverings, are several thin rods or sticks, fifteen or eighteen inches in length. In answer to my inquiries, Mr. Piercy leads me to an adjoining room, fitted like the others with opium-couches. Here, in a narrow recess, originally intended probably to serve as a cupboard, a complete altar-table is arranged. Bright with Chinese tinsel, strips of silk, peacock-feathers, and other ornaments, it presents a similar show of egg-cups, vases, incense-sticks, and lamp. This is the Chinaman's temple of Vesta, and the primitive oil and wick constitute his Vestal fire. In memory of his departed dear ones is his lamp ignited, and to them it is that he occasionally fills the egg-cups with spirit, places his incense-stick in the flower-pot, and, lighting both, allows them to consume away to the accompaniment of his heathen prayers.

Having thus explored the entire house, we descend again to the nondescript room which we first entered. Our communicative friend is still there. He has replenished his supply of opium, and shows me his little phial, with the remark, "Shilling." I take it from him, and turn it round in amazement. It contains no more than would fill, say, two ordinary thimbles, and yet such is its price. Thousands of men, earning, some, as little as one shilling a day, are helpless slaves to this expensive indulgence. How, then, can we

the street. Calling in at a neat and tidy little shop, kept by a most intelligent-looking man, also a son of Shem, although sprucely attired in European garments, we pass on to a second opium den. This is smaller even than the first, and offers less accommodation. We find some ten or twelve only gathered here, by whom a cordial welcome is extended to us. We explore the house, as we explored the first. Similarly arranged and partitioned it calls for no especial remark. Upon rejoining the party below, we are offered chairs and-a cup of tea. John Chinaman is hospitable, and tea is his favourite beverage. A tea-pot stands always upon his table, and very frequent are his potations. He requires no milk and no sugar, and appreciates only the pure and undefiled concoction. "Sugar, milk," says our host for the occasion, no good; make tea ill." I do not know that I quite agreed with him; but I drank his potion, and thanked him heartily. The good man next shows us where he boils his water. He has just had a new stove in, it appears, and manifestly has not yet forgotten that it was paid for in coins of her Majesty's realm. Drawing from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper he spreads it out before us, and ruefully reads aloud the receipted total: "Four poun', fife shillin'." On the question of opium-smoking he is a little vague. Asked if he smoked, he answers, 'Sometime." To the inquiry, "You smoke much?" his answer is again, "Sometime." And when interrogated as to whether he does not mean to give it up, "Sometime" is his only reply.

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These two dens, of which I have endeavoured in the foregoing to give some faint description, are not the only representatives of their class in Eastern London. In Limehouse, Poplar, and Shadwell there are known to be at least six or seven of these low haunts. The descriptions given serve for them all. Vile, inhabitable tenements, transformed into the homes of vicious, ruinous indulgence, they constitute a pitfall and trap to many of those simple Easterns, of whose cheap labour we so greedily avail ourselves for the terrible toil of the engine-rooms. They labour for us. We pay them meanly,

ment when the request was made in his wife's usual unconsciously imperious manner,

"Perhaps, my dear," observed Jolliffe, "Mr. Pascal would rather see our old parish church. We have been talking of poor Mrs. McIntyre's painted window. Keith will be sure to meet the girls."

Mrs. Jolliffe was too much engaged to hear, and Pascal, of course, made fresh assurances of his pleasure in going with the young ladies to St. Matthias's.

Mrs. Jolliffe could only act on one idea at a time. She had an idea just now that it would be well to make Keith jealous. She had seen with satisfaction on the previous evening that Sophie, though all unconsciously, had made him jealous, and doubted not his jealousy would drive him to do all he could to persuade Sophie to consent to an early marriage. It was the way in which Jolliffe had been brought to make up his mind, and Mrs. Jolliffe had a belief that, in matters of courtship at least, men were very much alike. Neither she nor Sophie felt any doubt but that Jolliffe was right in saying Keith would be sure to meet her and accompany her to St. Matthias's, for though she was going there ostensibly at young Dwining's request, she had, in acceding to that request, also considered how often Keith had asked her, and had consented more for his sake than Dwining's.

Sophie's bonnet was on, and she was downstairs before her cousin had ceased laughing at the idea of Pascal accompanying them. As Miss Bowerby kept them waiting, Jolliffe proposed Sophie should show Pascal the way into the garden through the brewery and orchard. They passed through the old drayyard. The great curtained drays, pulled into the long dray-house, had the slumberous air of four-post state beds, where Time, having turned every other owner out, seemed to be napping himself. Even the small two-wheel dray, as it rested on its shafts with its curtains hanging forward, had the look of a spaniel that had shaken its long ears over its cheeks in anticipation of an extra doze.

In its Sunday repose the brewery was a picture of cleanliness and order. So Pascal remarked, as he followed Sophie to the narrow door which led them right out among the pear-trees, now dazzling to behold in the full morning sun.

"I have seen the finest views the world can show," remarked the new manager, gazing round with eyes that softened as they gazed, "but I look on this sight with more pleasure than ever."

"Then you have been used once to live among orchards?" asked Sophie.

"In my school-days-yes."

"I wish my cousin would come," said Sophie; "she will make us late.”

"Not if we go round by the wall and across Trutbrook Common," answered Pascal quickly.

Sophie's glance of surprise betrayed him into showing some vexation and embarrassment. "Why should this be?" she wondered, and immediately thought of one of the hard things her mother had said of him. Mrs. Jolliffe suspected Pascal to have been about the place as a spy before he was sent formally by Lovibond as the new manager.

While Sophie's cheek burned with this idea, Pascal added quickly,

"I heard some one say that way was nearer by a quarter of a mile than the road. Is it not so, or am I under a mistake?"

"No, you are quite correct," replied Sophie brusquely. "Here comes my cousin at last." She was, indeed, unfeignedly glad to see her companion, for a strange dislike for the society of Pascal had come over her with the suspicions awakened by his involuntarily disclosed acquaintance with the neighbourhood he was supposed never to have seen before. She determined to have some talk with her father on the subject as soon as she returned from church, that he and Mr. McIntyre might be more on their guard, both with Lovibond and his coadjutor.

The walk to church was not particularly pleasant. Sophie met all Pascal's remarks with coldness and reserve; her cousin seemed to him insufferably silly.

Dwining, who met them near the churchdoor, had to hide his pleasure, and succeeded in assuming a seriousness that only made the brightness of his eyes more intense.

St. Matthias's was a new church, with a new organ, a new congregation, a new young rector, and two new young curates. Only the organist was old, and a master in his art.

Pascal seemed more interested in Dwining and Sophie than in the elaborate church service. vice. He saw that, to Dwining, Sophie, and not Matthias, was the patron saint of the church; while Sophie herself appeared soon to forget Keith Cameron in her delight at the music, and her sympathy with Dwining's appreciation of it. Pascal certainly saw a shade come over her bright face as she glanced round her sometimes, but only, he fancied, indicating a girl's annoyance at a slight offered her before the world, and not any serious heartache.