considerable period, while promising a "lawyer's letter" to enforce
payment of the same. Next this hostile protocol lay a business-like
missive bearing a Lincoln's Inn look about it not to be mistaken, and
which Bruce determined he would leave unopened till the morning, when,
if Nina had slept, and was doing well, he felt nothing in the world
could make him unhappy.

"Serves me right, though," he yawned, "for deserting Poole. _He_
wouldn't have bothered me for a miserable pony at such a time as
this;" and flinging off his clothes, in less than five minutes he was
as fast asleep as if he had never known an anxiety in the world, but
was lulled by the soothing considerations of a well-spent past, an
untroubled conscience, and a balance at his banker's!

So he slept and dreamed not, as those sleep who are thoroughly
out-wearied in body and mind, waking only when the sun had been up
more than an hour, and the stormy night had given place to a clear,
unclouded day.

The Channel was all blue and white now; the rollers, as they subsided
into a long heaving ground-swell, bringing in with them a freight
of health and freshness to the shore. The gulls were soaring and
screaming round the harbour, edging their wings with gold as they
dipped and wheeled in the morning light. Everything spoke of hope and
happiness and vitality. Bruce opened his window, drew in long breaths
of the keen, reviving air, and stole to listen at Nina's door.

How his heart went up in gratitude to heaven! Mother and child were
sleeping--so peacefully, so soundly. Mother and child! At that early
period the dearest, the sweetest, the holiest link of human love--the