Only one little fact) prevented his carrying this resolution into effect on the following day. The fact was, he was penniless, and the Duleths would suffer as well as him self, should he be dilatory in his weekly payments. His first duty surely was to this helpless family, of which he had be come a member. However, he would go to Goupil's and learn .if any offer, however small, had been made for his pictures. He went, and was told that the , trad© was ab a standstill. In a conversation which fol lowed, on the panic, he became alarmed, lest in the universal crash the house in which his cheque was drawn might go down, and be lose his own (or Miss Ashleigh's) fortune. So he went immediately from the picture-dealer's to the bank, and drew out the amount of his cheque in gold. The clerks were a long time counting out the money. They had to go down into the vaults for ifc. Oliver did not suspecb thab in ths meantime a messenger had been despatched to the jeweller's to ascertain if the cheque was all right, and finally, when three sizable boxes stood on the floor before him, marked §50,000 each, he was in a quandary what to do with them. ' The express will call presently ; better wait and send them by the messenger. An ordinary drayman might talk too much aboub tho matter,' eaid the secretly as tonished teller. , The artisb safe down on one of the boxes and waited. An electrical thrill ran through his frame as he seated himself on this throne of gold. He would have been immensely elated had he nob felb so dubious about his own claims. Some ir en l —by far the greater number— would have never allowed this to trouble their enjoyment one single hour. But Oliver was made of finer stuff. He could not quite reconcile himself to his own con ducb. Ib seemed to him a remarkable phase of the affair that thatminialmre should have been there amid those jewels intact, when its worshipper was dust, engraved in imperiehable letters of diamonds with the name Ethelda, as if ib were the fixed pur pose of Destiny that the treasure should be restored to its true owner, _fchia second Ethelda. 