'Never?' exclaimed Pamela.

'No; he does not leave his room.'

She lowered her voice. do not believe he ever will leave it again. It's not that he's really ill, his doctor tells me, but he's slowly letting himself go.'

Pamela answered absently. Sir John Stretton and his ailments played a small part in her thoughts. It seemed that the library was again to become typical of the house, typical of the life its inhabitants led. Nothing was to happen then. There was to be a mere waiting for things to cease.

But a second letter was lying upstairs unopened on the table, and that letter, harmless as it appeared, was strangely to influence Millicent Stretton's life. It was many hours afterwards when Millicent opened it, and, compared with the heavy tidings she had by the same post received, it seemed utterly trifling and unimportant. It was no more indeed than the invitation from Frances Millingham of which Pamela had spoken. Pamela forgot it altogether when she heard the news which Tony had sent, but she was to be affected by it too. For she had made a promise to Tony Stretton, and, as he had foreseen, she would at any cost fulfil it.

(To be continued.)

SOME EMPTY CHAIRS.

BY HENRY W. LUCY.

A CERTAIN table in the dining-room of a historic Pall Mall Club is haunted by precious memories. A quarter of a century ago there began to frequent it a little coterie numbering from six to eight. At most five could be seated at luncheon. On the daily average room for four sufficed. The little club within a club had no prescriptive right to this or any other table. But possession was courteously recognised. A member, not one of the little set, would as soon have thought of seating himself at the desk of the head waiter as of appropriating one of the chairs at this little table by the window.

Remnants of the Old Guard still gather for the midday luncheon. But it is with saddened memories of unforgotten faces, well-remembered voices. Here through many years sat James Payn, his kindly humour, flashing wit, irradiating the table talk. Next to him sat spectacled William Black, not nearly so sombre as he looked. Most frequently the odd man at the end of the table, George Augustus Sala, habitually a late comer, poured forth a flood of commentary upon a world about which his knowledge was extensive and peculiar. Opposite James Payn, through thirty years of unremitting attendance, sat J. R. Robinson, in his last years modestly, but with just satisfaction, bearing the title Sir John. All, all, are gone; the old familiar faces.

One reason that made Robinson's record of attendance at the luncheon-table exceed that of any other habitué was his horror of holidays. He found pleasure and recreation in work, and had no sympathy with men who must needs go abroad for a month or six weeks in the year, breaking up the monotonous interval by weekending at Brighton or other health resorts. Exercise was all very well. But if a man wanted to walk, why, there was Fleet Street. Every day through six days a week Robinson, having spent the morning in Bouverie Street, directing the affairs of a great newspaper, on the stroke of half-past twelve took a walk down Fleet Street' till he was overtaken by the first 'bus going westward as far as the bottom of the Haymarket. This he hailed and was conveyed

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to his beloved Club, and the bright society that clustered round the little table by the window.

Among other points of sympathy between Robinson and James Payn was the conviction that within the bounds of Ludgate Hill and Hyde Park, London possessed every convenience and necessity of life the heart of man could desire. If under family or friendly compulsion either left town for a holiday, long or shortand three days was accounted long-he went forth as if his goal were the scaffold. Once, greatly daring, they set out for a Saturday to Monday excursion to Winchelsea and Rye. Of the attractions of the old Cinque Ports they had heard much from the sitting member, a club colleague, though not belonging to the table. For weeks after their return their account of the expedition rivalled in interest Captain Cook's log of an even more distant voyage. Walking about the ancient streets of Rye they (so they said) did not come across a living soul. Straying into the yard of an inn, equally deserted, they observed a horseless onmibus. Opening the door they found the driver seated inside fast asleep.

'Ah,' said James Payn, with a sigh of satisfaction, 'here's the population.'

The spirit of enquiry thoroughly aroused, they rambled on till they came upon the upland overlooking the sea. Time was when Rye proudly ranked among the Five Ports, generously contributing its quota to Plantagenets and Tudors for defence of the island. Now, the wayward sea standing afar off, there is visible between its marge and the ancient town a desolate stretch of shingle and sand.

'Well,' murmured Robinson, forlornly gazing around, this is the dullest place I ever saw.'

'Yes,' said Payn, 'even the sea has deserted it.'

Hurrying back to the station, where with well-rewarded foresight they had left their portmanteaux before making reconnaissance, they caught the train to town, dining late but happy at the Club in Pall Mall.

Brighton, as being within an hour's run by rail, and in other respects a suburb of London, was more attractive to Robinson. In summer time, during the last ten or twelve years of his life, he frequently ran down on a Saturday afternoon, compromising with his conscience by returning to business at an abnormally early hour on Monday morning. Wherever he might be, his heart, untravelled, fondly turned to Bouverie Street. Once, and only

once, I induced him to spend a week-end in the country with me. He bore up with fortitude through the Sunday, taking delight in relating his conversation with a cow in the early morning. He had been awakened about six o'clock by a cow lowing in a neighbouring pasture. I fancy it was not without a certain feeling of pride he recognised the origin and nature of the untimeous interruption of sleep. Some town-bred folk of less keen intuitive perception might have thought it was a horse neighing.

'Now, my good cow,' Robinson, with that chuckling laugh that accompanied his abundant story-telling, reported himself as having said, that will do for the present. I know what you want. What do you think of the "largest circulation in the world"? and what are your views on the policy of rival enterprise in billposting? But if you'll just be quiet five minutes I'll get to sleep again.'

Here the cow broke in with a fresh burst of even more anguished lowing, Robinson continuing his remonstrance and entreaty when the noise subsided.

Walking to the station on Monday morning to catch the nine o'clock train to London, he had scarcely closed the garden gate when in eager whisper he said:

'Where can I get the "Daily News "?"

On hearing that it did not arrive till the next train, he relapsed into moody silence. Evidently he did not know whether to pity or despise a community that could not have the 'Daily News' on their table before eight o'clock breakfast. I forget whether his visit to Hythe preceded or followed his excursion to Rye. Putting the two together, he had a very low opinion of the Cinque Ports.

The innocent prattling humour, disclosed in his conversation with the cow, will be a revelation of character to some of Robinson's newspaper staff at home and abroad. Actually, as some of us were privileged to know, he was the kindest-hearted, most generousnatured man in the world; gentle-mannered, even to timidity. Give him a pen in hand, a sheet of notepaper before him, and some laches calculated to hurt a hair of the head of the Daily News,' and he was a perfect ogre. During my long captaincy of the parliamentary staff of the paper I have seen veteran members of the corps grow pale when a messenger has handed to them a note addressed in Robinson's unmistakable hieroglyph. Only a sentence or two, but every word a spike driven under the fifth rib.

Experientia docet. In the early days of my work on the ' News,'

Robinson was accustomed to encourage me with generous praise. At that time, the fashion of special descriptive articles, now common enough, was beginning to have vogue. Hardly a copy of the paper appeared without one in large type, written chiefly by Archibald Forbes and myself. On a Christmas time, now, alack! thirty years sped, it occurred to me that seasonable copy was to be made out of a visit to the old almshouse at Rochester where at an earlier Christmas Charles Dickens lodged his 'Seven Poor Travellers.' I went down, made a careful survey of the hostelry, had a friendly conversation with the housekeeper, and wrote an article purporting to be the experience of a strolling paper-stainer who had spent in the almshouse the night on which Christmas Day dawned. I still treasure-praise was rarer, more precious, in those days-a note received from Robinson on the day the article appeared. As usual, it was short; as customary, it was pointed; happily it was kind. If this is not genius,' so it ran, 'it is something very like it.' Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley, especially when he is one's commander, with the keys of promotion in his pocket, is praise indeed. I felt more than rewarded for my winter journey down to Rochester. But there is a cloud to most silver linings. For the dramatic purposes of my article, the six other Poor Travellers having gone to roost, I brought in the matron, with a jug of porter in her hand, representing her as saying, 'I'm not going to bed myself for a bit, and if you like to sit by the fire and smoke a pipe and drink a glass whilst I mend a stocking or two, you'll be company.' This made opportunity for a chat, in which the matron related some particulars in the history of Watts's, notably connected with the visit of Charles Dickens, on which was founded his memorable Christmas story.

Unfortunately the matron, a practical person, took a view of the incident remote from poetry or prose fiction. She engaged, probably had thrust upon her, the services of a local solicitor, who wrote a letter to the manager of the Daily News' threatening action for libel. His client's present prospects were, he wrote, blighted, her future blasted, by the statement in a journal, avowedly of large circulation, that, the rest of the company having gone to bed, she sat up till all hours of the night mending stockings whilst a tramp sat within arm's length of her chair smoking a short pipe (I had not indicated its length) and drinking porter.

Robinson once confided to me the fact that his passion for travel was tamed by incurable apprehension of shipwreck. 'I could