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story of the Transfiguration, to

listened without word or motion.

which Mattie

He then went

on to the following story of the lunatic and apparently epileptic boy. As soon as he began to read the account of how the child was vexed, Mattie said conclusively :

"That was Syne. I know him. He's been at it for a long time."

"And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour,"" the bookseller went on reading in a subdued voice, partly because he sat in his shop with the door open, partly because not even he could read "the ancient story, ever new" without feeling a something he could not have quite accounted for if he had thought of trying. But the moment he had read those words, Mattie cried,

"There! I knew it !"

It must be remembered that Mattie had not

read much of the New Testament.

alone had led her to read any.

Mr. Spelt Everything

came new to her, therefore; every word was

like the rod of Moses that drew the waters of

response.

"What did you know, princess ?" asked her father.

"I knew that Somebody would make him mind what he was about-I did. I wonder if he let a flash of that light out on him that he had just shut up inside him again. I shouldn't wonder if that was it. I know Syne couldn't stand that no, not for a moment.-I think I'll go to bed, Mr. Kitely."

CHAPTER XIX.

On the River.

OTWITHSTANDING the good

humoured answer Thomas had made to Mattie, her words stuck to him, and occasioned him a little discomfort. For if the bookseller's daughter, whose shop lay between the countinghouse and the court, knew so well of his visits to Lucy, how could he hope that they would long remain concealed from other and far more dangerous eyes? This thought oppressed him so much, that instead of paying his usual visit to Mr. Molken, he went to Mrs. Boxall's at once. There, after greetings, he threw himself on the cushions of the old settle, and was gloomy. Lucy looked at him with some concern. Mrs. Boxall murmured something about his being in the doldrums, a phrase she had learned from her son John.

"Let's go out, Lucy," said Thomas; "it is so sultry."

Lucy was quite ready in herself to comply. For one reason, she had something upon her mind about which she wanted to talk to him. But she objected.

"My grandmother is not fit to be left alone, Thomas," she said, regretfully.

"Oh! ah!" said Thomas.

“Never mind me, child," interposed the old woman. "You'll make me wish myself in my grave, if you make me come between young people. You go, my dear, and never mind me. You needn't be gone a great while, you know." "Oh, no, Grannie; I'll be back in an hour, or less, if you like,” said Lucy, hastening to put on her bonnet.

An hour's in reason.

"No, no, my dear. Anything in reason, you know."

So Lucy made the old lady comfortable in her arm-chair, and went out with Thomas.

The roar of the city had relaxed. There would be no more blocks in Gracechurch Street

that night. There was little smoke in the air, only enough to clothe the dome of St. Paul's in a faintly rosy garment, tinged from the west, where the sun was under a cloud. The huge mass looked ethereal, melted away as to a shell of thicker air against a background of slate-colour, where a wind was gathering to flow at sunset through the streets and lanes, cooling them from the heat of the day, of the friction of iron and granite, of human effort, and the thousand fires that prepared the food of the city-dining population. Crossing the chief thoroughfares, they went down one of the lanes leading towards the river. Here they passed through a sultry region of aromatic fragrance, where the very hooks that hung from cranes in doorways high above the ground, seemed to retain something of the odour of the bales they had lifted from the waggons below during the hot sunshine that wiled out their imprisoned essences. By yet closer alleys they went towards the river, lescending still, and at length, by a short wooden stair, and a long wooden way, they came on a floating pier.

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