you've got to do later on? You have to
supply me with men-servants and maid-servants,'--here he smacked his
lips,--'and the peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I'll clothes and
boots, and presently I will return and trample on you.' He stepped
forward energetically; he saw that one of his shoes was burst at the
side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the
gutter. 'All right,' he said.

'That's another nick in the score. I'll jostle you later on.'

Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with
the certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with
only fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks,
and lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were almost
audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go to bed at
all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern Syndicate
for Torpenhow's address, and got it, with the intimation that there was
still some money waiting for him.

'How much?' said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.

'Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to
you, of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle
accounts monthly.'

'If I show that I want anything now, I'm lost,' he said to himself. 'All
I need I'll take later on.' Then, aloud, 'It's hardly worth while; and
I'm going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and
I'll see about it.'

'But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your
connection with us?'

Dick's business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the
speaker keenly. 'That man means something,' he said. 'I'll do no
business till I've seen Torpenhow. There's a big deal coming.' So he
departed, making no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And
that day was the seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with
awful distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!

It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to
exist for twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to
begin the experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid
seven shillings a week for his lodging, which left him rather less than
a shilling a day for food and drink. Naturally, his first purchase was
of the materials of his craft; he had been without them too long. Half
a day's investigations and comparison brought him to the conclusion that
sau