le; his faults punished none but himself. And for what did "the
Panorama" stand if not for the whole gospel of human hope without which
no life may be lived at all? Alban had some glimmering of this, but he
could not have set down his reasons in so many words. As for the little
lad "Betty"--was not the affection they lavished upon him that which
manhood ever owes to the weak and helpless. Search London over and you
will not find elemental goodness in a shape more worthy than it was to
be found in the caves--nor can we forego a moment's reflection upon the
cant which ever preaches the vice of the poor and so rarely stops to
preach their virtues.

This was the human argument of Alban's association, but the romantic
must not be forgotten. More imaginative than most youths of his age, his
boyish delight in these grim surroundings was less to him than a real
and inspiring sense of the power of contrast they typified. Was he not
this very night sleeping beneath some famous London house, it might be
below that very temple of the great God Mammon, the Carlton Hotel? Far
above him were the splendid rooms, fair sleepers in robes of lace, tired
men who had earned enough that very day perhaps to feed all the hungry
children in Thrawl Street for a lifetime and to remain rich men
afterwards. Of what were the dreams of such as those--not of sunshine
and a cottage as the old parson had dreamed, surely? Not of these nor of
the devoted sacrifice of motherhood or of that gentle sympathy which the
unfortunate so readily give their fellows. Not this certainly--and yet
who should blame them? Alban, at least, had the candor to admit that he
would be much as they were if his conditions of life were the same. He
never deceived himself, young as he was, with the false platitudes of
boastful altruists. "I should enjoy myself if I were rich," he would
say--and sigh upon it; for what assumption could be more grotesque?

No, indeed, there could be no sunshine for him to-morrow. Nothing but
the shadows of toil; and, in the background, that grim figure of
uncertainty which never fails to haunt the lives of the very poor.

CHAPTER V

DISMISSAL

Alban had been a disappointment to his employers, the great engineer of
the Isle of Dogs, to whom Charity had apprenticed him in his fourteenth
year. Faithful attempts to improve his position in the works were met,
as it would seem, by indifference and ingratitude. He did his work
mechanically but w