manner in which she moved upon her couch. Her rusty black skirt and thick boots were muddy and travel-stained, and by the manner she pushed the tangled mass of dark hair from her brow I knew that her head ached.

Glave, in no good mood at the introduction of tramps, entered, announcing that my dinner was ready; but she firmly, yet with sweet grace, declined my invitation to eat, saying that if I would permit her she would rather remain alone on the couch before the fire for half an hour longer. Therefore I sent her some hot soup by old Mrs Axford, our cook, while her father, having washed his hands, accompanied me to the dining-room.

He seemed half-famished, taciturn and reserved at first, but presently, when he had judged my character sufficiently, he explained that his name was Burton Blair, that in his absence abroad he had lost his wife ten years before, and that little Mab was his only child. As his appearance denoted, he had been at sea the greater part of his life and held a master’s certificate, but of late he had been living ashore.

“I’ve been home these three years now,” he went on, “and I’ve had a pretty rough time of it, I can tell you. Poor Mab! I wouldn’t have minded had it not been for her. She’s a brick, she is, just as her poor dear mother was. She’s done three years of semi-starvation, and yet she’s never once complained. She knows my character by now, she knows that when once Burton Blair makes up his mind to do a thing, by Gad! he does it,” and he set those square jaws of his hard, while a look of determination and dogged persistency came into his eyes, the fiercest I had ever seen in any man.

“But, Mr Blair, why did you leave the sea to starve ashore?” I inquired, my curiosity aroused.

“Because—well, because I had a reason—a strong reason,” was his hesitating reply. “You see me homeless and hungry to-night,” laughed Burton Blair, bitterly, “but to-morrow I may be a millionaire!”

And his face assumed a mysterious, sphinx-like expression which sorely puzzled me.

Many and many a time since then have I recollected those strange, prophetic words of his as he sat at my table, shabby, unkempt and ravenously hungry, a worn-out, half-frozen tramp from the highroad, who, absurd as it then seemed, held the strong belief that ere long he would be the possessor of millions.

I remember well how I smiled at his vague assertion. Every man who falls low in the social scale clings to the will-o’-the-wisp 

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