n his
father's carriages, would notice that he walked about in broken boots!
To-day he had been careful to come by back ways to that favourite road
whose sunshine and shadow he had run over so often as a boy; to his
seat on that chair which was placed beneath the hedge of the garden in
whose house he had been born.

Three months ago, when to his overwhelming astonishment it was first
made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had
gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the
patrimony had not been squandered--had been put out to usury rather,
bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold--a man living in luxury and
holding the respect of his fellow-townsmen.

"You can come to me," the brother had said. "Eat at my table, sleep
beneath my roof. I shall not turn my back upon my brother. But I shall
not pay any bills for you, nor shall I allow you a farthing of
money--you have shown us the use you make of money. You will find it
inconvenient to be without, and I advise you therefore to get work."

So, for three months he had availed himself of his brother's hospitality,
and the brother had kept his word. For three months he had crossed in
the muddiest part of the street because he had feared to look the
crossing-sweeper in the face, he had avoided the placarded blind man,
the paralytic woman who had known him well. He carefully made _detours_
to escape these, and the shoeblack boys with whom he had been held in
high favour. As for the people of his own class--the world is not all
unkind, but it is very busy, very forgetful--none remembered to seek
him. He had been surrounded by associates of a sort; and he found
himself quite alone.

For the first week or so he had thought it would be an easy thing to
find employment; a few rebuffs where he had looked for a helping hand,
a curt refusal or two, seemed to show him it was an impossibility. He
had no knowledge of book-keeping, he could not take a clerkship;
business men, with a mere glance at his handsome, delicate features, at
the shrinking, deprecating glance of his eyes, at his white, nervous
fingers, his faultless dress, decided that he was no good.

"Work? Yes. But at what can I work?" he had asked his brother at
length, flushing and hesitating; for since he had been a recipient of
his bounty he had become afraid of his highly-respected relatives, and
of the wife who looked at him with hard eyes as he took his place at
the table.