can tell her. As sure as I am a living man, I
shall expose her. If it comes to that, I'll go to
the church door and tell the whole thing out, I
will."

"She won't let it go to that," said Miss
Manuel. "She is too clever. You have the
game in your own hands now, Sir John, and can
play that poor woman like a fish in one of your
own ponds down at Westende. How cruel you
are. I am in terror of you."

"By Jove! that is what I shall do," said he,
thinking he was deriving a new idea from his own
mind. " I have a plan of my own, Miss Manuel.
I shall play her. There is no hurry. I'll give a
little more line. That's what I shall do; and
pull her up with a jerk. Ha, ha! I'll teach her!"

Sir John, grumbling, and lashing himself in a
sort of mulish fury, presently rose to go. When
he was gone, her eyes flashed. " They are all
working for me," she said; " unclean spirits all;
but no matter. They are all converging to the
one point. The end is not far away, and it will
be soon time to gather up the threads." Then
she thought tenderly, but exultingly, of the loved
and lost darling that she fancied was looking
down on her as she advanced on this course, and
whose soft gentle soul she strangely believed
would be soothed and propitiated—like some
cruel heathen idol—by bloody human sacrifices.
Presently another visitor entered, when a soft
light passed over her face, and the ruthless spirit
she was fondling in her arms disengaged itself
and fled away. It was Young Brett.

MUD.

MUD, in its several stages of stony, sticky,
stodgy, slushy, and washy. Mud as it exists
between high and low tide levels on the shores of
seas, and the banks of rivers. This is the sense
in which we take mud for our present subject.
This strip, more or less narrow according to its
steepness, is covered with water twice every day,
and twice every day laid bare again, by the tide.

We will take the case of the River Thames.
The sovereign is sovereign over all the flowing
rivers in her dominions; not exactly as owner,
but as a trustee for the nation, to ensure free
navigation and useful adaptation of the streams.
It happens, however, that the City of London,
represented by the Lord Mayor and Corporation,
has over and over again put in a claim to
the Thames within metropolitan limits — the
Thames water, the Thames bed beneath the
water, and the Thames mud by the side of
the water. The Crown has stoutly resisted
this claim. The fight began in earnest about
twenty years ago. The City had, in
consideration of certain fees or rents, granted
licenses for the construction of piers, jetties,
wharves, piles, landing-stages, and so forth, on
the strip of land between high and low water.
The Crown now said, " This is mine;" the City
replied, " No it isn't;" and so they went at it.
The City acknowledged the original right of the
sovereign to rivers and beds of rivers, but
appealed to certain old charters and grants by which
important privileges had been conceded to the
loyal and faithful Londoners. Seven long years
of battling ensued ; and, when it was found that
the Crown was getting the best of it, seven years
more were spent in determining how far, and in
what way, the Lord Mayor should give up his
claim to be King of the Thames. At length, an
act of parliament was passed in eighteen
hundred and fifty-seven, by which the City yielded
up its powers or claims, and the Crown
entrusted its powers to a board of commissioners,
for the good of the community. These
commissioners, whose duties are denoted by the
name " Thames Conservancy," were twelve in
number, nominated in three groups by the Crown,
the City, and the Trinity House. They were
made lords of the Thames, from Staines down to
Yantlet Creek near the mouth of the Medway.
They may build docks, wharves, jetties, stairs,
and landing-places ; or they may license other
persons to do so ; and they take cognisance of
other matters relating to the navigation of the
mighty river. Fifty or sixty, more or less, vessels
are sunk in the Thames every year, by some
mishap or other ; and the conservators have to raise
and remove them. The conservators are always
dredging the bed of the river in shallow spots,
to improve the navigation. They have made
the new steam-boat piers at Lambeth, at
London Bridge, at Cherry Garden Stairs, at
Millwall, and elsewhere. They every year grant
permission, on the payment either of a bonus or
a rent, to river-side folk for the placing of piles,
suction-pipes, mooring chains, mooring stones,
wharves, causeways, quays, platforms,
boathouses, slipways, steps, stairs, barge-beds, coal
landings, draw-docks, landing piers, wharf-walls,
jetties, embankments, gridirons, gangways,
shear-legs, and camp-sheds (sloping wooden
platforms resting on the mud), for facilitating
the landing and embarking of goods and
passengers. Sometimes, they fight the Trinity
House about matters connected with beaconage
and ballast; sometimes, they do battle with
river-side proprietors, concerning the right to
construct steam-boat piers. They try to catch
hold of any manufacturer who throws mud,
dirt, clinkers, ashes, offal, dung, offensive
liquids, gas refuse, or any other ojectionable
matters into our purling crystal stream. One
year they came down mightily upon three
persons who had added old mats, rotten
pineapples and damaged German yeast, to the water
of the Thames. On the other hand, they are
themselves' occasionally called to account as
offenders.

What, would the reader think, is the money-
value of a toe? The conservators were the
defendants in an action "to recover damages
for an injury to the toe of Jane Miller, by the
negligent shifting of the landing-board on a
steam-boat, by a pierman in the defendants'
employ, on their floating-pier at London Bridge."
The injury to Jane Miller's toe was settled by a
jury as equivalent to fifteen pounds sterling;