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 You can keep on being as wide-awake as you please at the same price, Mister!"

"Give me my hat and coat, Verges. Thank you," and John passed rapidly out at the door with a hasty "Good night!" Verges looked after him with wide-mouthed astonishment; then he looked at the piece of money in his hand; then he tapped his forehead, and shook his head ominously, muttering, "Daubs is daft—clean daft!"

John would not trust his waking senses till he reached the corner of the street at which he had seen so vividly in his dream the incidents just recorded. A solitary policeman was walking up and down, and not so much as a vehicle was to be seen. And then another fear took possession of John. Was his dream a presentiment of danger, and had an accident befallen Willie in some other form?

He soon reached his lodgings, hurried up the staircase, and listened fearfully outside the widow's door. Nobody seemed astir, but he could see that a light was burning within. Should he knock? What right had he, a perfect stranger, to intrude at this unreasonable hour? He remembered, too, his bitter thoughts and words about the widow and her children—her "brats!" So he mounted reluctantly to his apartments. How the silence—previously so much desired—oppressed him! He would eagerly have welcomed at that moment a cry, a sob, or any sound of life from the room below. But the sufferer gave no token, and John, in turn, became the sufferer in the worst form of suffering—that of mental anguish.

He could stand it no longer. John determined, at any cost, to see whether or not Willie had returned in safety. So he descended, and knocked at Mrs. Maxwell's door.

"Come in," said a quiet voice, and John opened the door. The first thing that met his gaze was his picture of the angel hanging at the head of a child's cot. Beneath it, calmly asleep, was Dodo—Willie's sister. A frail morsel of humanity she seemed, with pale, almost transparent, complexion—the paler by its contrasting framework of golden hair. Mrs. Maxwell was busily engaged at needlework. She hastily rose when she saw her visitor. "I thought it