admission into the service of Alaric Tudor. Mr. Hardlines was
soon forced to admit that the appointment was not a bad one, as
before his second year was over, young Tudor had produced a very
smart paper on the merits--or demerits--of the strike bushel.

Alaric Tudor when he entered the office was by no means so
handsome a youth as Harry Norman; but yet there was that in his
face which was more expressive, and perhaps more attractive. He
was a much slighter man, though equally tall. He could boast no
adventitious capillary graces, whereas young Norman had a pair of
black curling whiskers, which almost surrounded his face, and had
been the delight and wonder of the maidservants in his mother's
house, when he returned home for his first official holiday.
Tudor wore no whiskers, and his light-brown hair was usually cut
so short as to give him something of the appearance of a clean
Puritan. But in manners he was no Puritan; nor yet in his mode of
life. He was fond of society, and at an early period of his age
strove hard to shine in it. He was ambitious; and lived with the
steady aim of making the most of such advantages as fate and
fortune had put in his way. Tudor was perhaps not superior to
Norman in point of intellect; but he was infinitely his superior
in having early acquired a knowledge how best to use such
intellect as he had.

His education had been very miscellaneous, and disturbed by many
causes, but yet not ineffective or deficient. His father had been
an officer in a cavalry regiment, with a fair fortune, which he
had nearly squandered in early life. He had taken Alaric when
little more than an infant, and a daughter, his only other child,
to reside in Brussels. Mrs. Tudor was then dead, and the