of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped
in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.

"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he
said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let
him go. Reduce expenses at once."

Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate
little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and
there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though
there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are
leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if
she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the
soferens and buy one or two."

The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his
fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle.
While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not
give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to
stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many
nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated
to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and
expressing: "The interest alone is very big."

By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two
years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him
to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his
clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.

"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."

"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as
I was?"

Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a
penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the
least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys
for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him
at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the
platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s
Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.

He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might
cry out his intention.

"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the
shops."

Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed
costly blou