Birds of Prey

ngford, and had spent his brief holiday among old friends and acquaintance. The weather had not been in favour of that driving hither and thither in dog-carts, or riding

range if he returned to town looking none the better for his excursion. He looked considerably the worse for his week's abs

efore, and the recollection that she had been very familiar with him when he was a handsome black-eyed baby, with a tendency to become suddenly stiff of body and crimson of visage without any obvious provocation, inclined her

enture to inflict her rambling discourse; as Nancy Woolper - by courtesy, Mrs. Woolper - was fain to confess to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Magson, when her master was the subject of an afternoon gossip. The heads of a household may inhabit a neighbourhood for years without becoming acqua

sombre reverie in which he had been absorbed for the last ten minutes; "I am going to be very busy to-

e object they seem to contemplate. She was in the habit of watching Mr. Sheldon rather curiously at all times, for she had never quite got over a difficulty in realising the fact that the black-eyed baby with whom she had been so intimate could have developed

t may be that he had been disturbed by a semi-consciousness of that curio

ed that north-country quickness of intellect which is generally equal to an emergency, and was always ready with some question

- you said not at home to any one, except Mr. George. If it should be a person in a cab wanting their teeth out sudden - and if anyth

upted her with a s

, while I rub the rust off my forceps. There, that will do; take your tray - or, stop; I've some news to tell you." He rose, and stood with his back to the fire and his eyes bent upon the hearthrug, while Mrs. Woolper

Mrs. Hallida

irst sweetheart. And how she could ever marry that big awkward Halliday is more than I can make

t. She is one of those women who let other people think for them. However, Tom is an excellent fellow, and Georgy was a lucky girl to catch such a husband. Any little flirtation there may have be

ommunicative to his housekeeper. The old woman nodded and

lingford home still, though he had broken most of the links that had bound him to it -"an

hildre

his farm; that part of the world doesn't suit him, it seems - too cold and bleak for him. He's one of those big burly-looking men who seem as if they could knock you down with a little finger, and w

cy reflectively; "I've heard tell as it's the best land for forty mi

me. You know if a north-countryman gets the chance of ma

grin, and Mr. Sheldon went on talking, still looking at the reflection

the London markets as late as November. There are such places to be had if he bides his time, and he's coming to town next week to look about him. So, as Georgy and he would be about as capable of taking care of themselves in London as a couple of children, I have recommen

lasses that take half an hour to wipe a teacup. I'll manage easy

ere. And now go downstairs and think it over, Nancy. I must ge

thermore the advantage of certain little perquisites which a clever manager always secures to herself in a house where there is much eating and drinking. Mr. Sheldon himself had lived like a modern anchorite for the last four years; and Mrs. Woolper, who was pretty well acquainted with the state of his finances, had pinched and contrived for his benefit, or rather for the benefit of the black-eyed baby she had nursed nine-an

table, unlocked it, and took out a quire of paper; but he made no further advance towards the writing of those letters on account of which he had dismissed his housekeeper. He sat, with his elbows on the t

The eye of the phrenologist, unaided by his fingers, must have failed to discover the secrets of Mr. Sheldon's organisation; for one of the dentist's strong points was his hair, which was very luxuriant, and which he wore in artfully-arranged masses that passed for curls, but which owed their undulating grace rather to a skilful manipulation than to any natural tendency. It has been said that the rulers of the world are straight-haired men; and Mr. Sheldon might have been a Napoleon III. so far as regards this special attribute. His hair was of a dense black, and his whiskers of the

e "thinking out" of future work to be done, and it was an operation as precise and mathematical as the actual labour that resulted therefrom. The contents of his brain were as well kept as a careful trader's ledger. He had his thoughts docketed and indexed, and rarely wasted the smalles

n one man for the other, but you could hardly have failed to perceive that the two men were brothers. They resembled each other more closely in form than in face. They were of the same height - both tall and strongly built. Both had black eyes with a hard brightness in them, black whiskers, black hair, sinewy hands with prominent knuckles, square finger-tops, and bony wrists. Each man seemed the personification

ffection. They liked each other very well, and were useful to each other, and took their pleasure together on those rare occasions when they w

back again. You're looking rather seedy, though. I

with Halliday and the old se

pity he doesn't go it a little faster, and go off t

d have me, if he did leave her

ed Tom; and even if she has forgotten all that, she'd have you if you asked her. Sh

enough; but she knew how to drop a poor sweetheart and

how afraid she used to be of spoiling her frocks? I don't believe she married Tom Halliday of her own free will, any more than she stood in the corner of her own free will after she'd torn her froc

omily; "I know I want a rich wife badly enough.

erly dowagers don't come up to time, eh? Very f

gford business, thinking I should be able to stand out and make a connection; but the connection gets more disconnected every year. I suppose people came to me at first for the novelty of

usand pounds and something amiss w

t stick at the age, if the money was al

e wore a good deal of finery in the shape of studs and pins and dangling lockets and fusee-boxes; his whiskers were more obtrusive than his brother's, and he wore a moustache in addition - a thick ragged black moustache, which would have become a guerilla chieftain rather than a dweller amidst the quiet courts and squares of Gray's Inn. His position as a lawyer was not much better than that of Philip as a den

n I shall have ten years in which to enjoy myself, and twenty more in which I shall have life enough left to eat good dinn

oking down at the fire, with his eyes shaded by their thick black lashes. The fire had

d I hate a good many things - it's a bad fire," he s

acid; but when I saw the dull gray streets and the square gray houses, and the empty market-place, and the Baptist chapel, and the Unitarian chapel, and the big stony church, and heard the dreary bells din

to London I underst

t his chest. He and Georgy are coming up to town for a few weeks, so I've asked them to stay her

George; "I don't

mpany will be better than an empty house. The visit won't cos

man's life ought to be made to "answer" in some way. "But I should think you would be rather bored by the arrang

mpanions of their early manhood. The dentist produced the remnant of a bottle of whisky from the sideboard, and rang for hot water and sugar, Wherewith to brew grog, for his own and his brother's refreshment; but the co

w, George, and I couldn't afford the express," he said apologetic

uple of cigars, and consumed the contents of the whisky-bottle; "so I'll take myself off. I told yo

ginning of

fore they come, I daresay. You might as well drop in upon

d kind o

get much work o

u'll never get muc

ough. Every man has his chance, depend upon it, Phil, if he knows how to watch for it; but there are so many men who get tired and go to sleep before their chan

walked away from his brother's door. Philip heard him, and

g in parish-registers for heirs-at-law. A big lump of money is not very likely to go a-begging while any one who can fudge up the fain

y who admired the trim brightness of the dentist's abode had no suspicion that the master of that respectable house was in the hands of the Jews, and that the hearthstone which whitened his door-step was paid for out of Israelitish coffers. The dentist'

d he nursed that wan shadow of a practice, and sustained that appearance of respectability which, in a world where appearance stands for so much, is in itself a kind of capital. It certainly was dull dreary work to hold the citadel of No. 14 Fitzgeorge-street, against the besieger Poverty; but the dentist stood his ground pertinaciously, knowing that if he only waited long enough, the dupe who was to be his victim would come, and knowing also t

eary court. While his little capital lasted he had kept himself clear of debt, but that being exhausted, and his practice growing worse day by day, he had been fain to seek assistance from money-lenders; and now even the money-lenders were tired of him. The chair in which he sat, the poker which he swung slowly to and fro as he bent over his hearth, were not his own. One of his Jewish creditors

his manner to-night was not the dull blank apathy of despair. It was the manner of a man whose brain is occupied by bus

r me," he muttered, "if I had p

eculiar to houses after midnight reigned in Mr. Sheldon's domicile, and he could hear the voices of distant roisterers, and the miauling of neighbouring cats, with a painful distinctness as he sat brooding in his silent room. The fact that a mahogany chiffonier in a corner gave utterance to a faint groan occasionally, as of some feeble creature

usually late at night or early in the morning. He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watching it till it burned briskly. Then he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture-chamber. The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied by the ghost of some patient who had expired

book to the room above, where he seated himself under the gas, and opened the volume at a place in which there was a scrap of paper, evidently l