"

Leonard had now--followed the nephew into the shop. There still burned
the gas-lamp. The place seemed more dingy and cavernous than before.
Death always makes its presence felt in the house it visits.

Leonard was greatly affected,--and yet more, perhaps, by the utter want
of feeling which the nephew exhibited. In fact the deceased had not
been on friendly terms with this person, his nearest relative and
heir-at-law, who was also a bookseller.

"You were engaged but by the week, I find, young man, on reference to
my late uncle's papers. He gave you L1 a week,--a monstrous sum! I shall
not require your services any further. I shall move these books to my
own house. You will be good enough to send me a list of those you bought
at the sale, and your account of travelling expenses, etc. What may be
due to you shall be sent to your address. Good-evening."

Leonard went home, shocked and saddened at the sudden death of his kind
employer. He did not think much of himself that night; but when he rose
the next day, he suddenly felt that the world of London lay before him,
without a friend, without a calling, without an occupation for bread.

This time it was no fancied sorrow, no poetic dream disappointed.
Before him, gaunt and palpable, stood Famine. Escape!--yes. Back to the
village: his mother's cottage; the exile's garden; the radishes and the
fount. Why could he not escape? Ask why civilization cannot escape its
ills, and fly back to the wild and the wigwam.

Leonard could not have returned to the cottage, even if the Famine that
faced had already seized him with her skeleton hand. London releases not
so readily her fated step-sons.

CHAPTER IV.

One day three persons were standing before an old bookstall in a
passage leading from Oxford Street into Tottenham Court Road. Two were
gentlemen; the third, of the class and appearance of those who more
habitually halt at old bookstalls.

"Look," said one of the gentlemen to the other, "I have discovered here
what I have searched for in vain the last ten years,--the Horace of
1580, the Horace of the Forty Commentators, a perfect treasury of
learning, and marked only fourteen shillings!"

"Hush, Norreys," said the other, "and observe what is yet more worth
your study;" and he pointed to the third bystander, whose face, sharp
and attenuated, was bent with an absorbed, and, as it were, with a
hungering attention over an old worm-eaten volume.

"What is the book,