blinds, a file of fly-blown play-bills fastened to the wall, the black
and empty fire-places, a bald-headed old man nodding over the _Morning
Advertizer_, the slip-shod waiter folding a tumbled table-cloth, and
Robert Audley's handsome face looking at him full of compassionate
alarm--he knew that all these things took gigantic proportions, and
then, one by one, melted into dark blots and swam before his eyes, He
knew that there was a great noise, as of half a dozen furious
steam-engines tearing and grinding in his ears, and he knew nothing
more--except that somebody or something fell heavily to the ground.

He opened his eyes upon the dusky evening in a cool and shaded room, the
silence only broken by the rumbling of wheels at a distance.

He looked about him wonderingly, but half indifferently. His old friend,
Robert Audley, was seated by his side smoking. George was lying on a low
iron bedstead opposite to an open window, in which there was a stand of
flowers and two or three birds in cages.

"You don't mind the pipe, do you, George?" his friend asked, quietly.

"No."

He lay for some time looking at the flowers and the birds; one canary
was singing a shrill hymn to the setting sun.

"Do the birds annoy you, George? Shall I take them out of the room?"

"No; I like to hear them sing."

Robert Audley knocked the ashes out of his pipe, laid the precious