To that question no answer but a sour smile of a dragged-down lip and a
shrug of the shoulder had come, followed by the reminder that there was
always a crossing to sweep.

"I would rather sweep a crossing than lead the life you are leading,"
the brother had said.

And the other had acquiesced. It would be better, certainly; but--

For a young man of aristocratic appearance and faultlessly cut clothes
to take a place at a crossing in his native town, and beg of the
passers-by, some of whom would be personal friends, for coppers,
requires moral courage; he had been all his life, hence his
misfortunes, a moral coward.

So, of late, only spasmodically, and with a hopelessness that prepared
defeat, did he make efforts to find occupation. But he was not
naturally an idle man nor in all directions incompetent, and he watched
the people passing to office, shop, workroom, with a gaze which had
grown unspeakably wistful.

* * * * *

When the hour for the midday meal arrived, he had been wont to return
to his brother's house, but to-day he had something else to do.

The road being emptied of the stream of passers-by which flowed more
fully at that time, he got up and walked to the gate of the house where
he had been born, and looked long within, upon the garden. It had
always been a beautiful garden, full of flowering shrubs, and wide
lawns, and winding, box-edged paths. Very little had it altered since
to him it had seemed all the world, and he had the fancy to follow now
about its sunny, shadowy ways into all its pleasant haunts, the figure
of a little boy who had played there long ago.

It had been a lonely child who had played there, his only brother being
too old to play, and he had gone about the garden-ways, carrying his
absurd jumble of childish fancies, incredible aspirations, baby
ambitions, on untiring little feet. It pleased the young man at the
gate to follow him in fancy, from spot to spot, always in the sunshine,
always with flowers around him, and the whisper of trees about him, and
the song of birds overhead.

Leaving behind him the gay flower-beds upon which the creeper-covered
house looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness the
phantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and close
above an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been a
favourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young man
followed him