ike a renewed note, only spares one for a little while. It came back to him with interest, his hunger, and he grew disconsolate.

The city, with all its strange newness, was forgotten in turn. The snow chilled him; and the happy children buying toys in the grand shops, and the carriages dashing through the street, gave him an acute sense of loneliness. There were no mother and sisters to put gay presents in his stockings. Indeed, if there had been, they might have bought the stocking too, for never a one had Tom on those cold little feet!

Tom looked in a window at the rare pastry and confections, and his hunger grew maddening. He turned from the heaped delicacies, fearing that he might be tempted to thrust his arm through the thick plate-glass and help himself. He turned away in gastronomic agony, did Tomtit, and hearing the children ery "Merry Christmas!" wondered what it was and where it could be!

Hull passed rapidly up Holborn, and then, to avoid the heedless throng, walked on to the western part of the town. Fate led him, for Fate deigns even to shape the lives of such estrays as Tomtit.

Once he paused at a baker's door and looked so longingly at a waiter of fresh tarts on the counter that the shopgirl give him one, and her glossy curls shook all over with delight at the ravenous way he devoured it.

them down so kindly. Erratio and coquettish Sleep, that will and won't, and is so very like a woman! so hard to win, so exquisite and true when won.

Tom lay dreaming of ships, anchors, and ambergris, of fish and silent fields,

"Where calm and deep

The sunshine licth like a golden sleep."

In the midst of this the fire in the diminutive stove went out: and now commenced a combat between the warmth of the dreamer's fancy and the coldness which was gradually taking possession of the room. The alarm of a conflagration in the next street, the muffled sound of the engine dragged furiously past the door by men who seemed like demons red-hot from Pandemonium, and the jubilant clash of bells now and then, had failed to move the sleeper. But the silent, invisible lips of the Chli-fiend were eating into his slumber, and he dreamed of icicles! His little embrowned hand had lost its hold of the stool, and after one or two involuntary turns, he opened his eyes to the fact that it was growing intensely cold.

It was in vain that he drew himself together like a turtle: the cold touched the outer circles of his body, and sleep deserted him. He spied the velvet pall on the countr, and in a moment he had enveloped himself in its dreadful folds.

But the death-cloth warmed him no more than "Poor fellow!" said the girl, sobering, "heif he had been dead. In fact it threw a chill must have been fearfully hungry."

He was rather; and he annihilated two tarts with enthusiasm.

As he turned into one of the cross streets he beheld an old man looking in an undertaker's window, as if he were weary of life, and a desire to accost him and beg shelter, or directions for finding it, overcame his pride, which was but a remnant of its former self. He approached the man, who took no notice of him whatever, but continued to glare at the window with a wildness that almost startled Tom from his design. Now our humble hero was never blessed or afflicted, as the case may be, with great colloquial powers, and he was somewhat at loss as to how he should open a conversation with the eccentric and unique individual before him. In this dilemma the words he had heard spoken a thousand times that night broke musically over hsi lip:

"Merry Christmas, sir!"

over him, and he seemed covered with a black frost, colder than the snowy tracery which grew like magic over the shop-windows! He threw the pall from him as if it had been a pest, and tried to warm his hands by the jet of gas which burned azure, and yellow, and all colours. But it only aggravated his coldness.

The idea of freezing to death took hold of Tom, and out of this grew a strange act. His eyes fell on a coffin which he thought would hold him comfortably. It nearly exhausted his strength to lay the silk-padded box on the floor. This being done, he settled himself into it without hesitation, and once more made a coverlid of the heavy pall.

Then Tomtit fell asleep again, and commenced dreaming of dreary oceans and lonely isles, and "fairy lands forlorn," of cross-bones and eyeless skulls, church-yards and epitaphs, and God knows what! Just then a brazen-lipped sentinel in a neighbouring belfry solemnly tolled

Then it was that Jedd Pallfry turned and out the hour, and, unseen save by God's own

looked at him and said:

"Humph!"

IV.

POOR TOM'S A-COLD

eye, high up the steeple in the snow, and wind, and sleet, a ghostly finger pointed to the cabalistic figures XII,

V.

LIFTING THE PALL.

We left Tomtit floored, literally, at Chap. II. The hours went by like shadows, and he still Jedd Pallfry was detained at Mr. Dyke's lay under the charmed influence of sleep-much longer than he had anticipated-and the Sleep, the little sprite, from the land of No- clock struck twelve as he whirled round the where, that sits upon tired eyelids and weighs corner, and brought himself up against the wind

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ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENT S.

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