wo hours; and he throws himself, worn out with fatigue, upon the
doorstep.

Now a new terror seizes him. Has he money enough to reach London? Has he
his purse at all? Too dreadful to find himself stopped short, on the
very brink of deliverance! A cold perspiration breaks from his forehead,
as he feels in every pocket. Yes, his purse is there: but he turns sick
as he opens it, and dare hardly look. Hurrah! Five pounds, six--eight!
That will take him as far as Paris. He can walk; beg the rest of the
way, if need be.

What will he do now? Wander over the town, and gaze vacantly at one
little object and another about the house fronts. One thing he will not
look at; and that is the bright summer sea, all golden in the sun rays,
flecked with gay white sails. From all which is bright and calm, and
cheerful, his soul shrinks as from an impertinence; he longs for the
lurid gas-light of London, and the roar of the Strand, and the
everlasting stream of faces among whom he may wander free, sure that no
one will recognise him, the disgraced, the desperate.

The weary hours roll on. Too tired to stand longer, he sits down on the
shafts of a cart, and tries not to think. It is not difficult. Body and
mind are alike worn out, and his brain seems filled with uniform dull
mist.

A shop-door opens in front of him; a boy comes out. He sees bottles
inside, and shelves, the look of which he knows too well.

The bottle-boy, whistling, begins to take the shutters down. How often,
in Whitbury of old, had Elsley done the same! Half amused, he watched
the lad, and wondered how he spent his evenings, and what works he read,
and whether he ever thought of writing poetry.

And as he watched, all his past life rose up before him, ever since he
served out medicines fifteen years ago;--his wild aspirations, heavy
labours, struggles, plans, brief triumphs, long disappointments: and
here was what it had all come to,--a failure,--a miserable, shameful
failure! Not that he thought of it with repentance, with a single wish
that he had done otherwise: but only with disappointed rage. "Yes!" he
said bitterly to himself--

"'We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But after come despondency and madness.'

This is the way of the world with all who have nobler feelings in them
than will fit into its cold rules. Curse the world! what on earth had I
to do with mixing myself up in it, and marrying a fine lady? Fool that I
was! I might have known from