little on the other a second night-walker was drawing very
quietly near. Up jumped John. The envelope fell from his hands; he
stooped to get it, and at the same moment both men ran in and closed
with him.

A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, the poorer by a
purse which contained exactly one penny postage-stamp, by a cambric
handkerchief, and by the all-important envelope.

Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point of loverly
exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to be supported alone; and
not many hundred yards away his greatest friend was sitting at
supper--ay, and even expecting him. Was it not in the nature of man that
he should run there? He went in quest of sympathy--in quest of that
droll article that we all suppose ourselves to want when in a strait,
and have agreed to call advice; and he went, besides, with vague but
rather splendid expectations of relief. Alan was rich, or would be so
when he came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy this
misfortune, and avert that dreaded interview with Mr. Nicholson, from
which John now shrank in imagination as the hand draws back from fire.

Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow avenue, part
street, part by-road. The head of it faces the doors of the prison; its
tail descends into the sunless slums of the Low Calton. On one hand it
is overhung by the crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard.
Between these two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at
night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it has cleared the
place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was the
house of Collette; and at his door our ill-starred John was presently
beating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous
inquiries of the contraband hotel-keeper; in an evil hour he penetrated
into the somewhat unsavoury interior. Alan, to be sure, was there,
seated in a room lit by noisy gas-jets, beside a dirty table-cloth,
engaged on a coarse meal, and in the company of several tipsy members of
the junior Bar. But Alan was not sober; he had lost a thousand pounds
upon a horse-race, had received the news at dinner-time, and was now, in
default of any possible means of extrication, drowning the memory of his
predicament. He to help John! The thing was impossible; he couldn't help
himself.

"If you have a beast of a father," said he, "I can tell you I have a
brute of a trustee."

"I'm no