ithout enthusiasm. Had he confessed the truth, he
would have said, "I was not born to labor with my hands." A sense of
inherited superiority, a sure conviction, common to youth, that he would
become a leader, of men, conduced to a restlessness and a want of
interest which he could not master. He had the desire but not the will
to please his employers.

To such a lad these excursions to the West End, these pilgrimages to the
shrine of the outcast and the homeless were by way of being a mental
debauch. He arose from them in the morning as a man may arise to the
remembrance of unjustified excess, which leaves the mind inert and the
body weary. His daily task presented itself in a revolting attitude. Why
had he been destined to this slavery? Why must he set out to his work at
an hour of the chilly morning when the West End was still shuttered and
asleep and the very footmen still yawned in their beds? If he had any
consolation, it was that the others were often before him in that
cunning debauch from the caves which the dawn compelled. The Lady Sarah
would be at Covent Garden by four o'clock. The Archbishop, who rarely
seemed to sleep at all, went off to the Serpentine for his morning
ablutions when the clock struck five. "Betty," the pale-faced infant,
disappeared as soon as the sun was up--and often, when Alban awoke in
the cellar, he found himself the only tenant of that grim abode.
Sometimes, indeed, and this morning following upon the promise to little
Lois Boriskoff was such an occasion, he overslept himself altogether and
was shut out from the works for the day. This had happened before and
had brought frequent reprimands. He feared them and yet had not the will
to remember them.

Big Ben was striking seven when he quitted the cellar and London was
awake in earnest. Alban usually spent twopence in the luxury of a "wash
and brush up" before he went down to the river; but he hastened on this
morning conscious of his tardiness and troubled at the possible
consequences. The bright spring day did little to reassure him. Weather
does not mean very much to those who labor in heated atmospheres, who
have no profit of the sunshine nor gift of the seasons. Alban thought
rather of the fateful clock and of the excuses which might pacify the
timekeeper. He had never stooped to the common lies; he would not stoop
to them this day. When, at the gate of the works, a heavy jowled man
with a red beard asked him what he meant by comin