interest aroused as he recognized the hand.
"Again!" he muttered. "What mystery is this? Who can feel such interest
in my fate?" He broke the seal and read as follows:--

Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it? Are you
contented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or will
you make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge
at once into fame and power? I repeat that you fritter away your talents
and your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I
am impatient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and your
knowledge into some work of which the world may know the author. Day
after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe
more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which
you doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not
a wretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individual
authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while
dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and make
friends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whom
you call "the people." What if you are born of the noble class! What if
your career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money. Use what
I send you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at
least gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your
struggle to emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame.

YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND

A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth
silently replaced the letter on the table.

Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting,
and much to the same effect. Certainly, to a mind of less strength there
would have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of a
station higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsome
lot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his lone
position in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth's
steady sense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations
had effected. His mother's family was indeed unknown to him, he was even
ignorant of her maiden name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavourable
to much hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich and
well-born are seldom left obscure. From his father's family he had not
one expectation. More had he been moved by exhortation now gene