an important role in connexion with the army, and has rendered valuable assistance on many occasions, both to the combatant and non-combatant branches of the service. The purposes for which it is here used are very various. The effects of shot and shell of different calibres, and with varying charges, fired against iron plates and targets, are all carefully photographed, and thus recorded; pictures of new guns and carriages, of experimental structures of all kinds, of burst cannon, of newly adopted patterns, &c., are taken and registered for future reference. Photography is also employed for instructional purposes. In this connexion a series of very beautiful pictures has just been completed illustrative of Ordnance drill; the set consists of 120 photographs, and exhibits the method of working heavy guns, mortars, field artillery, rockets, &c. The prints are bound together in a large volume, and ranged in the order in which the different words of command are given. By means of these pictures, therefore, the rawest recruit, after having been assigned to a certain place, or number, at a gun, may see at once the position which he should occupy on the promulgation of the various orders; and an instructor in gunnery need merely be furnished with a complete series of these sketches in order to make known any modification or new system of drill. There are many other applications of the art which we might mention, but enough has been said to show that this establishment is one of great and wide-spread importance.

On the whole, we left our courteous friends the detectives with a deep conviction of the usefulness of the services which they perform, and wondering in our mind what strange revelations might be made if similar tests were applied to those necessaries used by the British taxpayer as are here unflinchingly administered to the articles supplied to the British soldier.

P. B. H.

the prospect it offered was nothing better than a view of the coal-cellar door. A heap of peas lay on the table beside her, and in her lap was a basin into which she had shelled half a dozen pods perhaps, when she fell into the reverie in which she was so deeply engrossed that she did not hear her mistress's approach.

When Mrs. Martin spoke, however, Jane came to her senses with a start that sent the basin and its contents crashing to the floor.

That settled it! The poet who praised a lady for being mistress of herself though china fell, was an observer of human nature. There is nothing that so destroys the balance of the feminine mind as the crash of crockery.

In the evening when Jane had finished her work, she had a yet harder task before her. She had to hunt a scrap of note-paper and a rather greasy envelope out of the dresser drawer, and sit down and write to her uncle and tell him that her mistress had given her notice. She was not by any means an accomplished letter-writer, and the pangs of composition, combined with a pen that had alternate fits of

spluttering and not marking at all, and ink that had been so often diluted with vinegar that it was of a pale rusty brown colour, completely overcame her, and she had a good cry.

What was the matter with Jane Newton? Well, to be brief, she was in love. Love is a complaint of which, as of other fevers, or the measles, the wealthy and the well-born cannot claim the exclusive enjoyment. Moreover, its course does not run a bit more smoothly in the basement than it does on the drawing-room floor. Poor Jane's love was crossed.

Jane was an orphan. Her father had been a soldier, who married without leave, and who died when she was but two years old, of a fever due to unwholesome barracks-about the most unprofitable way in which a soldier can die for his country. The mother earned a precarious living by doing charing, until, falling from a window that she was cleaning, upon the spikes of some area rails, she met with an accident which confined her to her bed in the hospital for six months, and then removed her to a narrower and colder bed in the Tower Hamlets Cemetery.

Jane had an uncle who was in the police; and although his pay

was small, and he had a wife and children of his own, he gave her a home till she was able to earn her own living. She was ten years old when he took her, and when she was fourteen she went out to service as maid-of-all-work at a lodging-house. There she spent six years of her life in the most hopeless drudgery, until lodgers who were about to move into a house of their own engaged her at increased wages to go with them. After being with

them two years, she left to "better herself," and took service with Mrs. Martin.

There you have the whole history of my heroine, and I think you will admit that at least it is not sensational.

Jane's uncle was a kind-hearted, well-meaning man. Unfortunately, he took too much of the policeman into private life, so that his family always seemed to be impressed with the fact that whatever they said would be taken down and might be used against them. Jane did not at all like the task of writing to tell him she had lost her place; he had been anything but satisfied with her for some time past, for he

did not by any means approve of the man upon whom she had set her affections. And Jane knew very well that it was on account of her being in love with that man that she had lost her place. So no wonder she buried her face in her apron and cried fit to break her heart!

CHAPTER II.

JOHN NEWTON, Jane's uncle, had stern and policemanly views of his duty to his niece. As soon as he received her blotted and ill-written missive, he felt it would only be right and proper to call on Mrs. Martin and learn why the girl was to be discharged.

"I really don't know what has come to her of late," said that lady, when he put the question; "she doesn't seem to know what she is doing, and neglects her work sadly."

"Very wrong, mum-very wrong, indeed; and I'm afeard it ain't likely to get better. You see, mum, she's in love, and with a man as isn't likely to be any good to her, or anybody else for that matter."

And then he as he described it-" up and told" all he knew of poor Jane's lover.

James Wilson was that lover's name, and his calling was "help at a livery stables." Mr. Newton did not know anything positively against him, but what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, and James Wilson, senior, was atoning in a distant colony for an error of judgment which led him to believe he had a right to get into gentlemen's houses by the skylights to remove any silver articles he might find there, and to convert them into money for his own proper-or improper-enjoyment.

Mr. Newton exonerated James the younger from any participation in his father's crime, for he was a child in arms when that worthy's career was brought to an abrupt close; but-and then Mr. Newton looked sagacious and shook his head, after the solemn manner of a policeman who wishes to impress upon you that "he could an' if he would."

His disclosures quite destroyed any remote chance there might have been of Mrs. Martin's relenting, and giving Jane another trial.

"Only to think," said that good lady to her husband, when he returned from the City that evening; "only to think that that girl Jane has actually got a follower whose father is in prison for burglary! Why, we should all be murdered in our beds some night. There, I shan't be happy till she's gone."

"Well, my dear," said her husband, who was reading his evening paper and smoking his after-dinner cigar, and did not care to be worried with domestic matters, "pay her a month's wages and let her go!"

"Very well, my dear, I'll do so to-morrow!" responded his better

half.

Now, when Mr. Newton, the policeman, gave the above little sketch of James Wilson's birth, parentage, and means of living, he was not aware that that unhappy man had lost his situation at the livery stables. It was that misfortune which had so upset Jane, and it happened in this wise.

A brougham had been hired to take a lady and gentleman to the opera. When it came back to the yard, Wilson had the cleaning of it. The next day the gentleman called to say that the lady had left a bracelet, the clasp of which had broken, in one of the pockets. It was looked for accordingly, but it was not to be found! The lady was positive she had placed it there. Wilson was equally positive he had not seen it. It was very unpleasant!

The livery-stable keeper was naturally annoyed. Suspicion pointed to Wilson, and as good luck would have it, when the livery-stable keeper called in a policeman, the constable, belonging to Newton's division, knew about Wilson's parentage, and mentioned it, in order to excite wonder at the knowledge and sagacity of the force.

Wilson was discharged, his master telling him that he ought to be grateful for being let off so easy.

A week afterwards the gentleman came back to the yard to say that the lady's maid had taken the bracelet out of the pocket after her mistress left the brougham, and had put it in one of the drawers in the dressing-room. But by that time the stable-keeper had lost all trace of Wilson. Indeed he was not anxious to see him again. “Best as it is,” said he; "one don't want convicts' sons about one's yard."

CHAPTER III.

ON the morning after her uncle's visit, Jane had a month's wages paid her, and was told that her services were no longer required, and she had therefore better leave at once.

This sudden discharge laid her open to a sudden temptation. She had hoped that a month would elapse before she would have to return to her uncle, and that by that time some other situation might offer; or, at the worst, that her reception at her uncle's would not have been a stern one. Now she dreaded to go to him. And there was only one other alternative.

She went to Wilson, and the next day they were married at the Registrar's Office.

"She has made her bed, and she must lie on it," said her uncle when he heard of it, and he was true to his word. From that day his door was closed against her.