e had a few pounds when he left Clarges Street--soon failed
him. He made no great effort to keep it, and was relieved to see the
end of it. His companions in misery soon helped him away with it, and
he let them.

But when it was gone the old necessity for work came back. By day he
hardly ever ventured out of his court, for fear of being seen by some
one who would attempt to rescue him from his present condition. At
night he wandered restlessly about in the narrow streets picking up an
early morning job at Covent Garden or in the omnibus stables.

He moved his lodgings incessantly, one week inhabiting a garret in
Westminster, another sharing a common room in Whitechapel, another doing
without lodgings altogether. He spoke little or not at all to his
fellow-miserables, not because he despised them, but because they fought
shy of him. They disliked his superior ways and his ill-concealed
disgust of their habits and vices. They could have forgiven him for
being a criminal in hiding; that they were used to. But a man who spoke
like a gentleman, who took no pleasure in their low sports, and sat dumb
while they talked loud and broad, seemed to them an interloper and an
intruder.

Once--it was about the beginning of August--in a lodging-house across
the river, he met a man to whom for a day or two he felt drawn. His
story was a sad one. His father had been a gentleman, and the boy had
been brought up in luxury and virtue. While at school his father had
died, and before he had left school his mother had been married again to
a brute who not only broke her heart, but, after setting himself to
corrupt his stepson, had at last turned him adrift without a penny in
the world. The lad, with no strong principle to uphold him, had sunk
deep in vice. Yet there lurked about him occasional flashes of
something better.

"After all," he would say to Jeffreys, as the two lay at night almost on
bare boards, "what's the odds? I may be miserable one day, but I'm
jolly the next. Now you seem to prefer to be uniformly miserable."

"Hardly a case of preference," said Jeffreys; "but I'm not sure that it
wouldn't be more miserable to be jolly."

"Try it. You'd give a lot to forget all about everything for an hour,
wouldn't you?"

"It would be pleasant."

"You can do it."

"By dropping asleep?"

"Sleep! That's the time I'm most miserable. I remember the old days
then, and my mother, and--I say, Jeffreys, I was once nearl