tranger looked round when she spoke, and snatched his hat off.
Barbara bent her head in general salutation and went her way. When she
left the street, she could scarcely believe that it had not all been a
dream. It was so unlike herself to do anything so bold-She felt more
and more guilty as she waited for the coach, more and more afraid of
confiding to her uncle such a scheme as that she had so hastily formed.
When she reached home she made one or two inward overtures towards the
attempt, but her courage failed her, and she kept silence. Yet she
used to think sometimes that if she had the power to shorten poor
Christopher's struggles, it was almost a crime not to do it.

CHAPTER II.

We who live in London know well enough that its streets are not paved
with gold. If one had asked Christopher his opinion on that point, he
would no doubt have laughed at the childishness of the question, yet he
came up to London with all the confidence and certainty which the old
childish belief could have inspired. He was coming to make his fortune.
That went without saying. He was brim-full of belief in himself,
to begin with. 'The world's mine oyster,' he thought, as the cheap
parliamentary train crawled from station to station. The world is _my_
oyster, for that matter, but the edible mollusc is hidden, and the
shell is uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc very shy, the shell
innutritive.

Publishers did not leap at the organ fugue in C as they ought to have
done. They skipped not in answer to the adagio movement in the May-day
Symphony. The oratorio conjured no money from their pockets--for the
most part, they declined to open the wrapper which surrounded it, or
to see it opened. Poor Christopher, in short, experienced all the
scorn which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and found his own
appreciation of himself of little help to him. His money melted--as
money has a knack of melting when one would least wish to see it melt.
Oxford Street became to him as stony-hearted a step-mother as it was to
De Quincey, and at melancholy last--while his letters to Barbara became
shorter and fewer--he found an enforced way to the pawnbroker's, whither
went all which his Uncle's capacious maw would receive; all, except
the beloved violin which had so often sung to Barbara, so often sounded
Love's sweet lullaby in the quiet of his own chamber. _That_ he could
not part with, for he was a true enthusiast when all was told. So he
went