ren," who knew nothing of it. We have to bear our troubles as we can; but Marion's burden was all the harder because it was so much heavier than her brother or sister were able to suspect.

CHAPTER VI.

AVING no more money, Marion had to walk, carring her parcel of paintings. From the Tottenham-courtroad to Waterloo Bridge is a long step; of that, however, she thought little, provided only she could sell her pictures. The man she was going to had already bought one or two sketches, small things, and at a moderately low price. He lived in Stamford-street, and called himself, on a brass plate, picture dealer and restorer. He was a German by birth, but had been long enough in England to speak English fluently, with only the sweet German accent, so as to interchange a few of the consonants, such as the labials and dentals, in that remarkable and pleasing manner peculiar to his countrymen. His name was Gott

fried Hermann, and he was said to be descended from the children of Israel, which is by itself a passport to everybody's favour. As for his religious principles, they were no doubt deep and genuine, the result of profound investigation and anxious thought; but as his daily practices were beyond everything scoundrelly, and his walk, or rather his creeping, in life was mean, tortuous, and shady, it would be perhaps superfluous to inquire into his creed. The Americans—a much more practical people than ourselves—make it a rule never to ask after the religion of a stranger. They like, on the other hand, first to make sure of his honesty. Perhaps we shall some time or other adopt this, among a few other laudable Transatlantic customs.

In every profession there must be perforce some whose natural place is about the lowest steps. We have not all of us learned to climb. To some of us climbing is not agreeable, to others it does not seem profitable. Mr. Gottfried Hermann was one of those who stand about the lowest steps of picture dealing. He was also one to whom that position was the most pleasant. On the higher levels he would

have found the air too bracing, the wind too keen, the light too brilliant, the situation too exposed, the sensation to a retiring and sensitive man suggestive of standing in a pillory. For his own part, he preferred to work in the dark, or rather in a sort of twilight of his own creating.

He was a fat, round-faced man of fifty, with a certain stamp upon his expression which, rightly or wrongly, we are accustomed to regard as indicative of habitual self-indulgence. He smoked a great-bowled German pipe, which might hold half an ounce or so, all day long; and he sat at the front window of his house in Stamford-street contemplating the passers-by when he was not studying a picture. There grew up from the area a thin and skeletonlike vine, which threw its slender arms across his window, and gave an air of verdure and Eden-like innocence to his features, as they beamed behind the sickly leaves in summer. In winter the tree suggested the similitude of the spider in his web.

This morning, the leaves being not yet out, and only a green budding visible along the

branches, he had the spidery look as his flabby face shone through the panes. He was not alone. A man in the last depths of shabbiness was with him, standing hat in hand, a suppliant.

"Give me work, Mr. Hermann. I can do it well and quickly."

"Tell me about New York first, what you was doing there."

"I was copying there."

"Aha! he was gopying. Zo, what was he gopying?"

This impudent rascal habitually adopted the use of the third person in talking to those who asked for work, with the deliberate intention of insulting his visitors, and an inward chuckle at the thought that most of them did not know they were being treated as servants, and were too miserable to resent it if they did.

"I was with Messrs. Fourbe, Gredin, and Fripon, the largest picture dealers in America."

"I know them, I know them. Let him sit down and tell me all he can about their business."

"There is not much to tell. They had good