with scorching heat; anon, he shivered to
the marrow of his bones.

Mr. Plew did not trouble his brain—or
perhaps it were better to say his brain was
not troubled; seeing that such fancies come
to a man, or stay away from him, without
any conscious exercise of his will—with
any fantastic embodiment of a Fever Phantom.
But he reported day after day, that
Sir John was in a nasty low way—a ve-ry
na-asty, low way—and that he couldn't
get him to rally.

"Do you think he is troubled in his
mind?" asked Mr. Levincourt. " Is his
heart ill at ease? He is perfectly conscious
now; and, I think, clear-headed enough to
give orders. And yet Paul tells me that
his master has entirely approved what has
been done, and what has been left undone.
He desires to see no one; has received no
letters except, as Paul tells me, one from
his agent sent to the Post Office at Shipley
Magna—and, in short, appears to be
singularly isolated in the world, for a man of
his wealth and position. I should fear his
life has not been a very happy one."

"Well," said Mr. Plew, musingly, "I
don't know, of course. But—but he
doesn't seem to me to be at all that sort
of man."

Mr. Plew's statement was vague enough:
and the vicar did not care to be at the
pains of probing the little surgeon's meaning.
Yet the latter had a meaning,
although he would have found it difficult
to put it into clear words.

His meaning was this; that from his
observation of Sir John Gale, he had,
half instinctively, drawn the conclusion
that his rich patient was not a man to
allow sentimental troubles to prey on him.

Wounded love, tender regrets,
affectionate yearnings after a lost friendship,
or a longing for softer tendance and closer
companionship than could be had from
servants and strangers, did not seem to
Mr. Plew likely to enter into the category
of drawbacks to Sir John's recovery.

Material comforts, nay luxuries, he did
not lack. As to sentiment—Mr. Plew of
course had encountered ailments arising
from purely spiritual causes. Very
troublesome ailments they were, and very
inefficacious proved the power of physic
to cure them. He remembered a saying
of an old clergyman who had been a
famous preacher in the days when
Benjamin Plew was walking the hospitals in
London. The saying was to the effect
that the bodily health of half the world
would be marvellously improved, if a
mechanical cunningly contrived piece of
granite could be substituted for a heart
of flesh in the human breast. " We might,
defy the doctors then," said this old
clergyman, "—and life would not be
worth having!" But of Sir John Gale,
neither Mr. Plew nor the reader, as yet
knows enough to enable him to judge
whether the baronet's heart be of flesh or
of stone.

A fortnight passed: three weeks: a
month had nearly dragged itself away
since the accident, when the doctors
pronounced that Sir John was somewhat
stronger.

The phantom hands, the hand of fire
and the hand of ice, slowly relinquished
their prey. By degrees the intervals
between their alternate touches grew wider.
At last they ceased. Danger was over;
and from the beginning of March, the
invalid began slowly, but surely, to mend.

WHAT BECOMES OF THINGS?

WHAT becomes of the enormous quantity of
objects, natural and artificial, which are daily,
weekly, monthly, annually, perennially,
produced and sent forth into the world?

What becomes (to plunge in medias res) of
all the pictures which our painters paint, and
exhibit, at the metropolitan and provincial
exhibitions, season after season, year after
year? We see them at the Royal Academy,
at the Asylum for Rejected Contributions to
the Royal Academy, at the Water-colour
Galleries, and at all the other Art Exhibition
Rooms. What becomes of them all? Of some
of them—the best—we know the fate. They
go into the hands of certain collectors in the
manufacturing districts who luckily have a
taste for art. Of some others we also know
the fate. They hang up in the studios of our
friends who painted them. Sometimes, again,
we come upon one in some carver's and
gilder's shop. But where are all the rest?
Where are the views of " Bettws-y-coed " and
of "Loch Coruisk," the production of which
has necessitated long journeyings and much
sitting out under white umbrellas? Where are
the representations of Dead Game, the Italian
Peasants, the " Studies of Heads"?

The books, again, what becomes of them?
These come out in legions, season after season,
representing, in addition to an enormous amount
of labour of different kinds, a considerable
accumulation of actual material: of paper, of
metallic types, of ink, of millboard, of cloth,
of leather. What becomes of all this matter?
What sort of proportion do the number of
books that are sold, bear to those that are
brought out? And, again, of those that are
sold, what becomes? Those that we see on the