and wide-awake people as those who cater for the people in the "Slap-bang" line?

The mystery seemed to me worth solving, and on that account I did not so much mind the marrowchilling mixture of snow and rain that blew into my eyes and ears as I greeted my friends in Newington Causeway. And I had the more reason to congratulate myself on my present opportunity, inasmuch as it happened that my newly-found acquaintances were waits of the kind that are said to be becoming extinct. Before I had been in Mr Weevil's company five minutes -Weevil was the flageolet and leader-indeed, while we were standing under a gateway, and fortifying against the weather's inclemency by a pull at my flask -I was duly informed that, please goodness, while he was a wait, he would "stick to the tex' as waits took their rise from," and that he could no more make up his mind to be guilty of the goings-on of some fellows who called themselves waits, than he could to lead a church choir with the music of the bones and banjo.

From the Elephant and Castle we struck into the New Kent Road, and "worked" the small streets to the left of that thoroughfare, it being Mr Weevil's belief -derived, I suppose, from experience that the sort of people here were more free with their contributions than those who were well-to-do. I must confess, however, that I did not find it very cheering at first. Five times did we make a "pitch" in the wind and the deadly-cold sleet, playing our three tunes: "Hark! the herald angels," "Lo, He comes," &c., and "While shepherds watched." Five times did Mr Weevil, tucking his flageolet in at the breast of his coat, and making a speaking trumpet of both his hands, deliver himself of his blessing and exhortation: "God bless you all, both

great and small; a a merry Christmas you befall. Remember the poor waits when they call. Nigh one o'clock and a boisterous morning." Five times, I say, was this ceremony repeated without so much as a light appearing at a window, or a passer-by bestowing on us a single copper. But this was nothing, Mr Weevil said. They seldom or never did get anything till Boxing Day. And how much do you hope to get then?" I asked.

Why, a matter of four pun' ten or five pound atwixt us," replied the old gentleman, looking radiant in the light of the street-lamp, and with the rain dripping from his nose on to his flageolet.

"To say nothing of the drink," remarked the Trombone, who was a short, thick-set man, lame of a leg, and with a twinkling eye; "Lor help you, you might swim in it, if you had a mind to."

Nevertheless, and despite the last-mentioned collateral advantage, I could not understand that thirty shillings for ten nights' work was very splendid remuneration for being a "Wait," in the cold, and the rain, and the wind. At our sixth "pitch," however, we did a little better. There were lights in the windows of the house, and enough could be seen of its interior to make known that it was a laundry, and that the ironers, late as it was, were still at work. We played out three tunes, and Mr Weevil had just begun "God bless you all," when a stout lady, with shiny arms, and her head enveloped in an ironing-blanket, ran out to the gate.

She beckoned Mr Weevil. "Would them two trumpets mind leaving off while you play Home, sweet home,' on your flute?" she asked. Mr Weevil was about, I think, to decline, when his nostrils, as well as ours, were assailed by the fragrant fumes of hot coffee

issuing from the door, which stood ajar. "He hesitated. I've got a son that's gone to Kennedy, and he used to play it on his flute; I wish you would," pleaded the old lady; "come in and do it, and them other three can have a warm at the ironing-stove." This was a temptation too great to be resisted. I don't know much about the flute myself, but I declare if Mr Weevil had refused, I felt so benumbed with cold, that I verily believe I should have borrowed his instrument, and struggled through "Home, sweet home" somehow, for the sake of a warm. But Mr Weevil was merely human. The tune, strictly speaking, was not according to "tex"," yet we all four went in, and, before an audience of five grinning young ironers, Home, sweet home was played, after which the benevolent laundress, besides sixpence, gave us a big yellow jug full of coffee, out of which we gratefully drank and drank about, and then turned into the night again quite cheerfully.

It was now getting towards two o'clock, and our "round" took a turn that to me appeared by no means promising. We entered a dingy narrow thoroughfare somewhere at the rear of St George's Church in the Borough; a mean little street, the shabbiness of the houses of which the mantle of night could not conceal. Nevertheless, from some cause or other, it was not deemed prudent to trust it to the guardianship of a single police-constable. We met two stalwart fellows of the "Force" shoulder to shoulder, tramping leisurely in the roadway, and occasionally with their "bulls' - eyes flashing a hint of their presence on the dingy houses to the left and the right. It was not quite dark, however, leaving the bulls'-eyes out of the question. Before at least half a dozen of the houses, thrust out from the fan-light over the door, or suspended from a

bar after the manner of a public-house sign, was a lamp inscribed with an intimation that "lodgings" might there be obtained.

There was a lack of uniformity about these lamps that was peculiarly striking. They were lamps of the oil-burning kind all of them; one being the mere iron frame of the original structure, walled in with part of an old newspaper, and inscribed with letters evidently cut out of some wall placard, to the effect that at that establishment "Logins for Travilirs" might be procured at the rate of "4d a nite, with cooking and blacking brushes "the latter, I suppose, being a rare and exceptional domestic convenience provided for the accommodation of lodgers who were desirous of turning out genteelly in the morning. There was a doctor's lamp, an appalling thing of oval shape, looking in the distance like a monstrous head with sea-green cheeks and forehead, and with flaming red eyes which blinked and winked on the hanging board inscribed "Lodgings here at 3d a night," in such a scowling and ruffianly manner as to make it seem a marvel that, even at this low figure, people were courageous enough to risk their lives in such a den.

A few doors further was quite a rustic contrivance, intended, it may be presumed, to appeal especially to tramps newly arrived from the agricultural districts. It was an old-fashioned waggon lantern, latticed with rusty iron and glazed with horn, with a steeple roof, and a door with a latch; and, in the loop of the latch, just as a rustic swain wears a nosegay in his buttonhole, there was stuck quite a handsome sprig of mistletoe. A tallow candle, flickering and flaring in the lantern's interior, revealed the fact that this was Blisterchick's lodging-house, and that it was open at all hours.

Was this Blisterchick's ordinary advertisement, or did it mean that at this festive season the hospitable lodging-house-keeper kept open doors and by this cheerful sign of the mistletoe sprig, desired it to be known that even tramps and other folks so poor that threepence was all they could afford to pay for a night's lodging need not despair of Christmas entertainment? Was there to be revelry at Blisterchick's on Christmas Day, and were the lean tables in the great kitchen on which on every other day throughout the year appeared no more sumptuous fare than the humble rasher or the appetising bloater-were these same modest boards to creak under mighty dishfulls of roast and boiled Blisterchick bounty, his annual Christmas-box to his friends. and patrons ?

The idea went well with the lantern. All honour to the festive Blisterchick! And at that very moment there came along the street a woman whose clothes were a mere bundle of rags, carrying at her back a year-old youngster, whose blue arms encircled its mother's throat, and held on by her bonnet-strings. Besides this one, the woman led another child by the hand. She hesitated, then paused at Blisterchick's door, and knocked. A fat, dirty old woman, with a greasy old cotton handkerchief over her head and a sackcloth apron with a bib to it-you could see all this quite plainly, for she came to the door with a lighted candle in her hand-appeared; and of her the woman with the children asked a question. Whatever it was, it was in so low and humble a tone as to be quite inaudible to one standing just a few yards away, but it was easy enough to hear the dirty, fat woman's reply-far easier than to print it in its entirety. "What next?" exclaimed the fat woman ferociously, and with an oath