the blood till I could get assistance. But where was I, and where was the driver? Thank God,' I cried aloud, that I am at last rid of that madman!' I looked round to see what sort of a place the wretch had ensnared me into.

It was an unfinished suburban street, with raw brick skeletons of houses, stretching their frail dreary walls up into the misty morning air. Some were caged in with scaffoldpoles, others had great heaps of mortar still piled up in front of them; unfinished iron railings, doors daubed, like clowns' faces, with patches of red; windows with white circles in their panes; gateways with gaping pits where steps were to be, everywhere met my eye. In front of me on a dead wall, Alpha Terrace,' the name of this future paradise, was written in staring whitewash letters. The only sound I could hear, far or near, was the rest less twitter of the wakening sparrows. I touched the horse; he was dead, cold, and already stiffening. The coach lay on its side, rising like a wall before me, at the bottom of a new-dug foundation, some twelve feet from the roadway. It was wonderful how I had escaped.

But the wretched maniac who would have taken my life, was he lying crushed beneath the cab? I must rouse myself and see if I can find any trace of him, though doubtless he believed me dead. If unhurt, he had fled, howling and exulting, to meet with that certain detection he had not cunning enough to escape; if injured, he had crawled away to obtain help.

As these thoughts passed through my mind, I stepped painfully over the dead horse, and again exclaiming, 'Thank God he is gone!' walked round to the other side of the cab, which hitherto had been hidden from me.

Good heavens! what did I see? My enemy the madman, sitting down between the upturned wheels, with his back against the body of the carriage, quietly cutting a leather trace into two long flexible strips. On his face, which was smeared with mud and gore, there was a hideous smile of malice as his eyes met mine.

"Vy, hallo, Lushington?' he said -not appearing in the least alarmed or surprised, and continuing his task-this is a rum start of yours, isn't it? Vot are you a-going to give me for my fare? I'm not going away, Colney Hatch, vithout getting paid for your mad capers, so don't think it, Mr. Hanwell. So now then, Crazy Bill, stump up.'

'It is you who are mad,' I said, ' and I leave you to your keeper.'

'Ve'll see about that,' said the villain, slowly getting on his legs and advancing towards me with the two leather straps, that he had now knotted into one long cord, dangling behind his back. 'You must come off with me to Bedlam, my man; you ain't safe at large; a cold showerbath is what you want, old Billy Bedlam. Now easy,-hiss!-easy.'

'Lunatic,' I cried, 'beware of a desperate man.'

There's two on us desperate, as fur as that goes,' said the wretch, leaping on me to bind my hands.

God forgive me for it, but as the fellow advanced, and ere he could seize my throat I drew a long broad knife quickly from my trousers pocket, and stabbed him under the left breast. He threw up his hands, screamed, 'The madman's done it!' and fell dead on his face.

I stood for a moment spellbound, but the sight of a red stream of blood winding towards my feet aroused me. ** I was a murderer; my brain was on fire; those drear gaunt houses seemed dancing round me; the earth seemed heaving into graves.

I erased the number of the cab, 1676, to escape detection, then threw down the knife, and fled I knew not where, with the speed of an escaped malefactor.

I shall never know where Iran. I passed through streets where shops were beginning to be opened in the bright morning sun; people called to me but I never stopped; I leaped over gates and chased through the rank grass of lonely meadows. There was a dead stillness at first in the air, and I thought I had escaped; but presently a sound, at first no louder than the bay of a watch-dog, seemed to gradually swell into the clamour and cry of a vast pursuing

mob. I could hear voices, and the tramp of feet: the wretches had dogs with them: they were tracking me. How strange that among them I seemed to specially distinguish the voices of Doctor Pledgett and his daughter Nelly! What had they to do there? I saw the mob breaking through a distant orchard, and thought I had beaten them off like so many wild curs; but suddenly in front of me, at a turning I cannot avoid, ran three men. They point to a dead, bleeding man lying on the ground. I dash at them. There are blows that fall crashing on my head, then there is a great darkness.

Oh,

When I awoke it was a soft spring morning, and I was in bed in a room I had never seen before. so neat and trim! A goldfinch was singing pleasantly at the window, and there were bouquets of violets on the white cloth of the dressingtable. A bright, rosy cloud rippled over the sky; a cheery fire sent quivering up the chimney its little yellow flames, and made a cozy, murmuring sound with its puffing jets of gas. I rose in bed by a great effort, for I was very weak, and looked at myself in the great toilet glass that faced the bed. I saw not myself, but a pale, hollow-faced, old man, whose shaven head was bound in wet bandages. It looked like Lazarus when he ascended those steps that led from the inner dark

ness.

Suddenly the door opened, and who should enter but my good friend, Dr. Pledgett? It was his house I was in. He smiled when he saw me once more conscious; but shook his finger when he observed that I was trying to speak.

The rest may be told in a few words. The long and the short of it was, that I had had a brain fever. The disease had broken out the night of the charity dinner, as my doctor had long expected. The severe mental labour of that case of Wormwood v. Widgett' had been too much for my brain. Pledgett had, indeed, as he sat opposite to me at dinner, that eventful night, seen premonitory symptoms of the disorder, and had tried to follow my cab. By my friends' wish I had been sent to his house, for the sake of greater attention.

Of my crazy doings that night, the less said the better. They ended, however, I may mention, in my upsetting the cab myself (for I had insisted on driving), in a dangerous place, and then stabbing the cabman, whom I had mistaken for an escaped madman. Luckily the wound, though it bled severely, had not proved dangerous. As for myself, I had then escaped from the cabman, who had tried to take me safely home seeing I was delirious, and being found in a field near Chiswick, was driven to a hospital, from whence Dr. Pledgett, hearing of my detention there, took me to his own house.

I soon recovered, thanks to my kind doctor, but, alas! having before lost my senses, I now lost my heart. I spent my long days of convalescence in wandering in the garden with Nelly, in practising duets, and reading Tennyson. I soon found it impossible to be happy without her.

To-morrow week, Nelly Pledgett, I am proud and happy to say, becomes Mrs. Osbert Wilkinson, thanks to my imaginary MAD CABMAN and the yellow cab No. 1676. W. T.

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