merica he had drifted. In New
York he had edited a newspaper; in San Francisco he had lectured, and
he returned home with an English nobleman who had engaged him as
private secretary.

When he passed out of the nobleman's service he took chambers in the
Temple, and devoted his abundant leisure to writing his memoirs, and
the pleasantest part of his life began. The Temple suited him
perfectly, its Bohemianism was congenial to him, the library was
convenient, and as no man likes to wholly cut himself adrift from his
profession, the vicinity of the law courts, and a modicum of legal
conversation in the evening, sufficed to maintain in his
absent-minded head the illusion that he was practising at the bar.
His chambers were bare and dreary, unadorned with spoils from India
or China. Mr. Stokes retained nothing; he had passed through life
like a bird. He had drifted, and all things had drifted from him; he
did not even possess a copy of his _Cradleland of Arts and Creeds_.
He had lost all except a small property in Kent, and appeared to be
quite alone in the world.

Mr. Stokes talked rarely of his love affairs, and his allusions were
so partial that nothing exact could be determined about him. It was,
however, noticed that he wore a gold bracelet indissolubly fastened
upon his right wrist, and it was supposed that an Indian princess had
given him this, and that a goldsmith had soldered it upon him in her
presence, as she lay on her death-bed. It was noticed that a young
girl came to see him at intervals, sometimes alone, sometimes
accompanied by her aunt. Mr. Stokes made no secret of this young
person, and he spoke of her as his adopted daughter. Mr. Stokes dined
at a theatrical club. All men liked him; he was genial and harmless.

Mr. Joseph Silk was the son of a London clergyman. He was a tall,
spare young man, who was often met about the Temple, striding towards
his offices or the library. He was comically careful not to say
anything that might offend, and nervously concerned to retreat from
all persons and things which did not seem to him to offer
possibilities of future help; and his assumed geniality and
good-fellowship hung about him awkwardly, like the clothes of a
broad-chested, thick-thighed man about miserable limbs. For some time
Silk had been seriously thinking of cutting himself adrift from all
acquaintanceship with Hall. He had, until now, borne with his
acquaintanceship because Hall was connected with a so