nd then, when luck had
favoured me, I had managed to get five shillings for a feuilleton from
some newspaper or other.

It grew lighter and lighter, and I took to reading the advertisements
near the door. I could even make out the grinning lean letters of
"winding-sheets to be had at Miss Andersen's" on the right of it. That
occupied me for a long while. I heard the clock below strike eight as I
got up and put on my clothes.

I opened the window and looked out. From where I was standing I had a
view of a clothes, line and an open field. Farther away lay the ruins
of a burnt-out smithy, which some labourers were busy clearing away. I
leant with my elbows resting on the window-frame and gazed into open
space. It promised to be a clear day--autumn, that tender, cool time of
the year, when all things change their colour, and die, had come to us.
The ever-increasing noise in the streets lured me out. The bare room,
the floor of which rocked up and down with every step I took across it,
seemed like a gasping, sinister coffin. There was no proper fastening
to the door, either, and no stove. I used to lie on my socks at night
to dry them a little by the morning. The only thing I had to divert
myself with was a little red rocking-chair, in which I used to sit in
the evenings and doze and muse on all manner of things. When it blew
hard, and the door below stood open, all kinds of eerie sounds moaned
up through the floor and from out the walls, and the _Morgenbladet_
near the door was rent in strips a span long.

I stood up and searched through a bundle in the corner by the bed for a
bite for breakfast, but finding nothing, went back to the window.

God knows, thought I, if looking for employment will ever again avail
me aught. The frequent re pulses, half-promises, and curt noes, the
cherished, deluded hopes, and fresh endeavours that always resulted in
nothing had done my courage to death. As a last resource, I had applied
for a place as debt collector, but I was too late, and, besides, I
could not have found the fifty shillings demanded as security. There
was always something or another in my way. I had even offered to enlist
in the Fire Brigade. There we stood and waited in the vestibule, some
half-hundred men, thrusting our chests out to give an idea of strength
and bravery, whilst an inspector walked up and down and scanned the
applicants, felt their arms, and put one question or another to them.
Me, he passed by, merely