BETWEEN OLD AND NEW Julian Casti's uncle had been three years dead.

It was well for him that he lived no longer; his business had continued to dwindle, and the last months of the poor man's life were embittered by the prospect of inevitable bankruptcy.

He died of an overdose of some opiate, which the anguish of sleeplessness brought him into the habit of taking.

Suicide it might have been, yet that was scarcely probable; he was too anxious on his daughter's account to abandon her in this way, for certainly his death could be nothing to her profit.

Julian was then already eighteen, and quickly succeeded in getting a situation.