gernaut was defrauding himself, for the average weight of dirt in each tub was not one hundred and twelve but one hundred and thirty pounds.

"You see, Mr Brash?" said Sir John cheerfully. "I am afraid you have all been in my debt to the extent of eighteen pounds of coal per tub for quite a considerable number of years. However,

if you will be sensible and go back to work, we will call it a wash-out and say no more about it."

Then he departed to London. But he had to return. The half-hundredweight of Cherry Hill and Marbledown Marbledown outbalanced Belton's plain facts and ocular demonstrations. The Pit "came out" en masse, against the advice and without the authority of their Union officials; and for two or three weeks men loafed up and down the long and unlovely street which comprised Belton village, smoking their pipes and organising occasional whippet-races against the time when the despot who employed them should be pleased to open negotiations.

But the despot made no sign. Presently pipes were put away for want of tobacco, and whippet-racing ceased for want of stake - money. Then came a tightening of belts and a setting of teeth, and men took to sitting on their heels against walls and fences, punctuating recrimination by expectoration, through another four long and pitiful weeks.

Not so utterly pitiful though. For a wonderful thing hap

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pened. The unknown benefactor of the strike of seven years ago came to life again. Every morning the postman delivered to the wife of each man in Belton a packet containing a ration of tea, sugar, and (once a week) bacon. Coal, too, was distributed by a mysterious motor-lorry, bearing a London number plate, and manned by two sardonic Titans, who deposited their sacks and answered no questions. So there was no actual destitution in the village. But there was no beer, and tobacco, and no money. Women and children can live for an amazingly long time on tea and sugar eked out by a little bread, but man is the slave of an exacting stomach and requires red meat for the upkeep of his larger frame. The whippets, too, had to be considered; and when, after an interval of seven weeks, a notice went up on the gates of the pit buildings, intimating that all who returned to work on the following Monday would be reinstated without question, Belton Colliery put its pride into its empty pocket and came back as one man.

But the danger was not over yet, as Juggernaut well knew. For the moment the men were subdued by sheer physical exhaustion. The first pay-day would fill their bellies and put some red blood into their passions. And it was certain information, received on this head at the Pit offices, that sent Sir John Carr home to Belton Hall with knitted brow and tight-set mouth one wintry Saturday afternoon in early

April, a fortnight after the men had resumed work.

He

He stepped out of the big motor and walked into the cheerful fire-lit hall. He stood and gazed reflectively upon the crackling logs as the butler removed his heavy coat. But the removal of the coat seemed to take no weight from his shoulders. He felt utterly lonely and unhappy. Was he growing old, he wondered. He was not accustomed to feel like this. He did not usually shrink from responsibility, or desire a shoulder to lean upon, but at this moment he suddenly felt the want of some one to consult. No; consult was not the word! could have consulted Carthew. In fact he had just done so, for Carthew had returned from his holiday two days before. What he wanted was some one to confide in. With a sudden tightening of the heart he thought of a confidante who might have been at his side then, had things been different-a confidante who would have sat upon the arm of his chair and bidden him play the man and fear nothing. Well, doubtless he would play the man and fear nothing, and doubtless he would win again as he had done before. But-cui bono? What doth it profit a man--?

He wondered where she was. Yachting on the Mediterranean, or frivolling on the Riviera. Or perhaps she was back in London by this time, ordering her

spring clothes and preparing for another butterfly season. At any rate she was not at Belton Hall. Whose fault was that? . . .

Had he been lacking in patience with her? Had he treated her too much like a refractory board - meeting? .. A little fool? Doubtless; but then, so were most women. And she was very young, after all. . . .

"Will you take anything before dinner, sir?" inquired a respectful voice in his ear. "Tea? Whisky and——”

"No, thank you, Graves. Is Master Brian in the nursery?" "Yes, sir."

"I will go up shortly and say good-night to him. Meanwhile

FRÉNILLY'S recollections begin when his years were seven, with the first entrance of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette into Paris as king and queen, and he was, he tells us, "struck with the note of peaceful splendour surrounding the whole spectacle which had nothing military about it. Not even the Swiss or the Life Guards in their uniforms of red and blue and gold suggested a military display. In this as In this as in many other things times have changed. Our ceremonies now the occasion of assembling real armies, and instead of merely going to listen to a Te Deum, they appear to be intending to lay siege to Nôtre Dame."

are

The passage is very characteristic of Frénilly's method of recording his memories. No child of seven would ever "be struck with the civil aspect of the procession," or make the reflections which Frénilly puts into his mouth, and in the same way we cannot place entire faith in the Baron's account of public events set down many years after they occurred. For he had no diaries and few letters to help him when in his exile he began to describe the "old forgotten far off things and battles long ago." Impressions have a way of getting blurred if not recorded at the moment, and of re-shaping themselves. The Napoleon of Mme. de Rémusat's re-written memoirs is most

certainly a very different person from the Napoleon seen through the halo of Arcole or Marengo of the original manuscript.

The Baron de Frénilly belonged by birth to the aristocracy of France, and like all his family and friends was Royalist to the tips of his fingers. The man as he unfolds himself does not in the least resemble his comic and sentimental portrait, with dishevelled hevelled hair and rumpled collar, placed in the beginning of the book. He was a lighthearted person, with a sense of humour (when his prejudices allowed it to have free play), fond of literature and society, and in a small way a poet, a journalist, a playwright, and a great reader. The miniaturist Le Guay has painted him with all the proper accessories: a roll of papers in his right hand; the portfoliopossibly that of the future deputy and councillor of State

under his left arm; a writing-box with a pen on the table beside him; but the pensive far-away gaze is not that of the "Coqueluche of Poitou" he has taught us to know.

His childhood was passed in surroundings less unhappy than those of many other infant aristocrats of the time, who, like the little Duc de Lauzun, were left chiefly to the care of servants and suffered greatly from neglect. The Frénillys were rich, and his father was

a cultivated man of the world, distinguished as a maker of verses and a charming companion, but chiefly remarkable in that day for setting a higher value on his wife and children than on any social success. As to his mother, Auguste adored her with more than the usual adoration of a French son, and to the end her memory remained with him as that of "a model which could not be reproduced." But she never allowed her little boy to be spoilt either by herself or by other people. "When I was six or seven, I used to scratch my sister a good deal," he says, and on one occasion when the scratching had been more than commonly severe, Mme. de Frénilly took a pin from her hair and calmly drew it across his hand. The circumstance made the desired impression upon Auguste, and did not need repetition. Perhaps his mother had been reading the Nouvelle Héloïse, and had laid to heart the lesson of force majeure.

When in the country the little Frénillys did not lack playmates, for many of the neighbouring châteaux were occupied by their relations. At one time the Neckers had a house near by, and the future Mme. de Staël "almost lived" at the Frénillys, and acted plays and proverbs with the rest. Every Sunday M. de Frénilly adjudged a prize for the best historical essay written by the children during the week, but the Baron omits to tell us if the wreath of roses crowned the brow of Mlle.

Necker more frequently than those of the other competitors. After this, their lives drifted apart and they did not meet again for years. "She loved

us as much as she could love anybody," he remarks, "and if she has since forgotten us it is no fault of hers. It is only because we never became famous."

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In spite of his life-long devotion to her, Mme. de Frénilly caused some pain to her son by the exhibition of sympathies contrary to his own. When he was grown up she shocked him by calling her dog Brutus, and placing a bust of his bête noire La Fayette in her room. But during his childhood she had done worse things still, and at sixty-eight the Baron's memory goes back to the time when he was ten years old and "all Paris" went mad over the visit of Voltaire. The excitement of Mme. de Frénilly whit behind that of any of the free-thinking poets who dragged his carriage through the streets to the Français, and wept with emotion at beholding his bust crowned on the stage by Clairon at the close of the performance of "the worst of his tragedies." Fain would she have been present at that moving scene, but as these joys were not for a lady of her position and principles, she determined that her son at any rate should be able to boast to his grandchildren that "he had seen Voltaire," though it would be impossible to conceive any boast which the worthy Baron

would ever be less likely to make! Yet how to bring this about? for Voltaire, then eighty-three years old, had quite as much as his health would bear in attending the public functions arranged in his honour, and orders were given that no one should be admitted to his rooms. However, an obstacle of that kind had no effect on the resolution of Mme. de Frénilly, and after much reflection she invented a plan which she felt sure could not fail of success.

The first step was to tell Auguste; and Auguste, who all his life was & mass of prejudices, had already formed at nine years old a very strong prejudice against Voltaire. The "frightful grimace" he made on hearing what was required of him revealed his feelings, and it was only after repeated appeals to his sentiments of honour and glory, and the bribe of a cup of coffee so strong "it would have made a goat jump," that he consented in an evil moment to pose as an infant prodigy.

Poor victim, he little knew what he was undertaking! For & week his mother crammed him with every scrap of Voltaire's poetry that seemed appropriate to the occasion, besides racking her brains to think of every question Voltaire might put, and teaching Auguste graceful and lyrical answers. Thus armed at all points the unwilling messenger awaited the fateful morning.

When he awoke he found his best clothes laid out on a

chair, and with the help of a valet he arrayed himself in a coat of apple-green satin lined with pink, breeches to match, white silk stockings, buckled shoes, sword at his side, hat tucked under his arm, while his hair had been subjected to an extra amount of crimping. His mother surveyed him with pride and satisfaction, and held out a letter "I never read it," he says when telling his tale, "but no doubt it contained all the gush with which an obscure lady would be likely to address a man whose fame is universal. It was intended to act as my passport with the servants, and should any questions be put to me at the door I was to answer that it came from a certain M. d'Arget, a common friend of my father and Voltaire."

Everything was now ready, and, with her train thus well laid, Mme. de Frénilly got into her carriage, followed by the smart and reluctant Auguste.

Near the corner of the Rue de Beaune the carriage stopped, and the boy got out.

"My knees trembled a little," he continues, "but I managed to reach the house without getting muddy. I passed through the gateway without finding, as I fully expected, any

porter to stop me, and turned to the right, as I had been told, up a little staircase leading to the entresol. Here a sort of valet came out to speak to me.

'Where are you go

ing, Monsieur?' he asked, and I an

swered, 'To see M. de Voltaire.' A door was instantly thrown open, and I found myself face to face with a skeleton lying on a large sofa, half hidden by a fur cap which came down to his eyes. I knew at once that it was Voltaire, but I had counted on having to walk through numerous