there among archways and passages, manoeuvred through the purlieus of
the market, and so back into the offices of his paper.

"And where is that _Dictionary of National Biography_?" asked John
Arniston of the boy. The precious letter for which he had risked penal
servitude and the cat in the prisons of his country for robbery of the
Imperial mails (accompanied with violence), was blazing on the fire.
Then, with professional readiness, John Arniston wrote a column and a
half upon the modern lessons to be drawn from the fact that Queen Anne
was dead. It was off-day at the paper, Parliament was not sitting, and
the columns opposite the publishers' advertisements needed filling, or
these gentlemen would grumble. The paper had a genuine, if somewhat
spasmodic, attachment to letters. And from this John Arniston derived a
considerable part of his income.

When he went back to his room he found that his landlady had been in
attending to the fire. She had also lifted the fallen Bible, on which he
could now look with some complacency--so strange a thing is the
conscience.

On the worn hair covering of the old Bible lay a letter. It was from
Miriam--a letter written as hastily as his own had been, with pitiful
tremblings, and watered with tears. It told him, through a maze of
burning love, among other things that she had been a wicked woman to
listen to his words--and that while her husband lived she must never
see him again. In time, doubtless, he would find some one worthier, some
one who would not wreck his life, as for one mad half-hour his
despairing Miriam had been willing to do. Finally, he would forgive her
and forget her. But she was his own--he was to remember that.