n an errand
of hope and endeavour, for he wants to push himself into the army of the
world's workers, somewhere. Prosaically, he wants to earn his bread,
and, if possible, butter wherewith to flavour it. Like Britons in
general, from Dick Whittington downwards, he thinks that the capital is
the place in which to seek one's fortune, and to find it. He had not
expected streets paved with gold, nor yet with the metaphorical plenty
of penny loaves; but an indefinite disappointment weighs upon him as he
passes through quarters fully as dingy and poverty-stricken as those in
his own provincial town.

Still on--on--across 'the province covered with houses;' sometimes in a
great thoroughfare, where midnight is as noisy as noon-day, and much
more glaring; sometimes through a region of silence and sleep, where
gentility keeps proper hours, going to bed betimes in its respectable
streets. Robert Wynn began to wonder when the journey would end; for,
much as he knew of London by hearsay and from books, it was widely
different thus personally to experience the metropolitan amplitude. A
slight dizziness of sight, from the perpetual sweeping past of lamps and
shadowy buildings, caused him to close his eyes; and from speculations
on the possible future and the novel present, his thoughts went straight
home again.

Home to the Irish village where his ancestors had long been lords of the
soil; and the peasantry had deemed that the greatest power on earth,
under majesty itself, was his Honour Mr. Wynn of Dunore, where now,
fallen from greatness, the family was considerably larger than the
means. The heavily encumbered property had dropped away piece by piece,
and the scant residue clung to its owner like shackles. With difficulty
the narrow exchequer had raised cash enough to send Robert on this
expedition to London, from which much was hoped. The young man had
been tolerably well educated; he possessed a certain amount and
quality of talent, extolled by partial friends as far above the
average; but the mainstay of his anticipations was a promise of a
Civil Service appointment, obtained from an influential quarter; and
his unsophisticated country relatives believed he had only to present
himself in order to realize it at once.

He was recalled to London by the sudden stoppage of the cab. On the dim
lamp over a doorway was stained the name of the obscure hotel to which
he had been recommended as central in situation, while cheap in charg