FILLING UP THE CHINKS.

CHAPTER I.

THE TOAD.

THE short winter's evening had closed in already up among the factory lanes. The kitchen fire was burning low and dull in Joseph Adams's cottage, and beside it sat Stephen Adams, his second son, a boy of about fourteen years of age, pale, flaxenhaired, and blue-eyed, yet known among his family, friends, and the factory folk generally, by the gruesome name of "Toad."

Stephen had been sitting silent and thoughtful for some minutes, looking steadfastly before him into the sinking firelight; but his reverie was not likely to remain much longer unbroken, for the baby, so soundly asleep only a moment ago upon his knee, was stretching its little pink arms as if in preparation for a wakening cry, and the small boy strapped into the chair at his feet was growing decidedly restless.

Stephen laid the baby on its back in the cradle,

B

and stood up for a moment to rest his weary shoulder-blades; then stooping over the straw chair, with a kind of a sigh he began to unfasten the old leather belt which, buttoned from arm to arm of the chair, held little Benjamin fast.

"There," he said, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "I'll take you out of prison, you poor little chap. I'm fond of little Benjie, ain't I, though I am a 'Toad '?"

"You're not a 'Toad,'" said Benjamin, stoutly. "Then what am I?"

"You are my own good Toddy, you are, and I love you," replied the child, as he rubbed his curly head against his brother's knee.

A husky cough and a bright smile responded to these words of affection.

Stephen lifted his little charge upon his knee and played with him gleefully for a few minutes, as if he had nothing on his mind; but in a pause of their game he bent down gravely and said in his ear,

"But, Benjie, Toddy' is only the short name for 'Toad.' My real name is Stephen. You could learn to call me Steenie, could not you? I'd like it, Benjie, I would."

They called Stephen Adams "the Toad," but whence could the origin of such a strange name be traced? Fair hair, fine as spun glass, and almost as white; a frame very frail, and apparently very small for his age; blue eyes, pure, large, and

thoughtful, but a little too bright and thoughtful for health, and a sweet and patient mouth, which seldom opened to utter a complaining word.

And yet the reason, after all, was apparent enough when the mouth did open, for the voice which came out through the guileless lips was a hoarse, croaking whisper, almost unintelligible to those who were not in the habit of deciphering its meaning.

Some four years ago, Stephen was a stout, rosy boy, earning a weekly sum for his father, in the great needle manufactory of the town, and almost as fine a specimen of thriving boyhood as his elder brother Mark. But one bleak day in January-a day ever to be remembered in the country, from the sudden squall and heavy fall of snow which came down, obliterating all the wellknown landmarks,—on this day, when the face of all nature underwent a sudden and startling change, little Stephen's life and future prospects underwent a great change also.

His younger brother Benjamin, then only a child three years old, had been sent for early in the morning to spend the day with his aunt and godmother, who lived some way beyond the neighbouring common, a wild gorse tract more than two miles in extent; and as the child ought to be back before nightfall, what more trusty guardian could they select to take charge of him home than Stephen ?

The afternoon was fine, though cold, when they

started; but they had not been more than half an hour on the road when the great orange piles of cloud which had been lying on the horizon rose with the sudden squall, and the snow began to fall, first in feathery sprays, which Benjamin stretched out his dimpled hands to catch, but afterwards heavier and heavier, dancing down quickly, thicker and thicker, till everything was obscured in the driving gust, and the pathway was blotted out.

Five hours afterwards a party of workpeople, headed by Stephen's father, found the boy, bewildered and almost numbed, sheltering beneath a gorse bush. His jacket was wound round his little brother, whom he held closely to his breast; but his shirt was stiffened with the frost, and the snow lay, unbrushed away, in his hair and on his face.

Benjamin escaped from any ill effects of this terrible snowstorm, but he seemed to have drawn the vital warmth from the breast of his brother. Poor Stephen shivered and wandered in his mind that night, and fell into a long and tedious illness, from which he had slowly recovered; but his cheek was ever after blanched, and had a look of the snow in it, and the sweet voice that used to trill through the house like a bird, was gone, and in its place remained a hoarse and guttural whisper, which fell with a painful misgiving on his mother's heart, but which became a source of laughter to his less feeling companions. And it was out of is pitiful infirmity, and his slow and creeping gait