must have happened to him, but yet I can quite remember that I had really very dreadful feelings. As the evening went on and the street grew darker and darker, and there began to be fewer passers-by, it seemed worse and worse. Once I remember bursting out into fresh crying at seeing, by the light of the gas-lamp, a little boy passing along chattering merrily to the gentleman whose hand he was holding. I felt like a poor shipwrecked mariner on a desert island-all the lonelier that I was in the middle of a great town.

"No doubt the shop people must have been getting uncomfortable and wondering what was to come of it. It must have seemed very strange to them; and, at last, the head man came out again and spoke to me this time rather sharply, perhaps he thought it the best thing to do"Young gentleman,' he said, 'this really can't go on! You must see you can't sit there the whole night. Try and think again of the name of the place you're staying at.'

"I don't know it,' I said, and I dare say I seemed rather sulky, for he grew crosser.

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"Well, if you can't or won't tell us, something'll have to be done,' he answered. 'It's the police's business, not ours, to look after strayed children, or children that won't say where they come from. Here, Smith,' he called out to the young shopman, 'just look up and down the street if there's a policeman to be seen.'

"He didn't really mean to do anything unkind, but he thought it the best way to frighten me into coming inside the shop, or into telling where I lived, for I don't think they quite believed that I didn't know. But the word 'policeman' terrified me out of my wits; I suppose I was already half-stupefied with tiredness and crying. If I had dared, I would have rushed out into the street and run off anywhere as fast as I could. But, through all, the feeling never left me that I must stay where I was, and I burst into loud

screams.

“Oh, papa, papa!' I cried, 'why won't you come back? The police are coming to take me; oh, papa, papa!'

"I was crying so that for a moment or two I

didn't hear a bustle at the other end of the shop. Then, all at once, I saw some one hurrying to me from the door leading into the other street, and as soon as I saw who it was, I rushed to meet him and threw myself into his arms, for of course it was my father. I don't think, in all my life, I have ever felt greater happiness than I did then. "Oh, Charlie,' he said, 'my poor little boy! Have you been waiting here all these hours good, obedient, little son?'

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"Then he turned to the shopman who was now a little ashamed of himself -I dare say the poor man had been getting really afraid that I was to be left on his hands altogether-and explained the whole mistake. He had gone straight on to the city after finishing his orders in the other part of the shop, forgetting that the last thing he had said to me was to wait for him at the front door of the shop; for his thoughts were very much taken up that morning with some very serious business, and it was actually not till he got back to the hotel, late in the afternoon, and found I wasn't there, that he remembered

that the plan of my running back alone had been

given up.

"Then he was terribly frightened and rushed off to the shop, hardly daring to hope he would find me still there. He kept saying he could scarcely forgive himself, and even years after, I often heard him say that he couldn't understand what had come over his memory that day.

“When the shop people saw how troubled he was about it, they began telling him how they had tried to make me come inside, but that it had been no use, and all the way home papa kept saying to me

"My faithful little Charlie'-which pleased me very much.

"He carried me to the hotel, and I felt so weak and tired that I didn't mind, even though I was a big boy of six years old. And I remember, even now, how delightful it was to get well warmed at the fire, and what a nice tea papa ordered for me.

"And the next day I was none the worse; luckily I hadn't caught cold, which papa was