fit comes on me I am not long in losing any job. They won't have me,
friend--they won't have me."

"You've been well employed, then, in your time?"

"No one better. If I had command of myself, I might have done as well in
my way as my brother has in his. I could beat him once, and I was quite
as industrious as he was; but, when I came to the crossroads, I took the
wrong turning, and here I am."

"May I ask how your brother succeeded? I mean--what is he?"

"He is Chief Justice ----."

I found that this was quite true; indeed, the Gentleman was one of the
most veracious men I have known.

"Does your brother know how you are faring?"

"He did know, but I never trouble him. He was a good fellow to me, and I
have never worried him for years. I prefer to be dead to the world. I
have haunted this place, as you know, for six months; to-morrow I may
make a change, and live in another sty."

"But surely you could get chance work that would keep you in decent
clothes and food."

"I do get many chance jobs; but if the money amounts to much I am apt to
be taken up as drunk and incapable."

The sweet, quiet smile which accompanied this amazing statement was
touching. The old man had a fine, thoughtful face, and only a slight
bulbousness of the nose gave sign of his failing. Properly dressed, he
would have looked like a professor, or doctor, or something of that
kind. As it was, his air of good breeding and culture quite accounted
for the name the people gave him. I should have found it impossible to
imagine him in a police-cell had I not been a midnight wanderer for
long.

"How did you come to learn shorthand?"

"My father was a solicitor in large practice, and I found I could assist
him with the confidential correspondence, so I took lessons in White's
system for a year. My father said I was his right hand. Ah! He gave me
ten pounds and two days' holiday at Brighton when I took down his first
letter."

"Have you been a solicitor?"

"No. I had an idea of putting my name down at one of the Inns, but I
went wrong before anything came of the affair."

"You say you have had good employment. But how did you contrive to
separate from your father?"

"Oh! I wore out his patience. I was so successful that I thought it safe
to toast my success. We were in a south-country town--Sussex, you
know--and I began by hanging about the hotel in the market-place. Then I
played cards at night with some of the fast hands, and was use