person of long and varied experiences; he knew that
queer feeling in the eyes, and his heart softened.

'Come, lean against the pillar,' he said, 'if you don't want to tumble.
Three of brandy's what you want. There's four minutes to wait yet.'

With body flattened to the masonry, legs apart, and head thrown back,
Darkey's companion felt more secure, and his mercurial spirits began to
revive. He took off his cap, and brushing back his light brown curly
hair with the hand which held it, he looked down at Darkey through
half-closed eyes, the play of his features divided between a smile and a
yawn.

He had a lively sense of humour, and the irony of his situation was not
lost on him. He took a grim, ferocious delight in calling up the
might-have-beens and the 'fatuous ineffectual yesterdays' of life. There
is a certain sardonic satisfaction to be gleaned from a frank
recognition of the fact that you are the architect of your own
misfortune. He felt that satisfaction, and laughed at Darkey, who was
one of those who moan about 'ill-luck' and 'victims of circumstance.'

'No doubt,' he would say, 'you're a very deserving fellow, Darkey, who's
been treated badly. I'm not.'

To have attained such wisdom at twenty-five is not to have lived
altogether in vain.

A park-keeper presently arrived to unlock the gates, and the band of
outcasts straggled indolently towards the nearest sheltered seats. Some
went to sleep at once, in a sitting posture. Darkey produced a clay
pipe, and, charging it with a few shreds of tobacco laboriously gathered
from his waistcoat pocket, began to smoke. He was accustomed to this
sort of thing, and with a pipe in his mouth could contrive to be
moderately philosophical upon occasion. He looked curiously at his
companion, who lay stretched at full length on another bench.

'I say, pal,' he remarked, 'I've known ye two days; ye've never told me
yer name, and I don't ask ye to. But I see ye've not slep' in a park
before.'

'You hit it, Darkey; but how?'

'Well, if the keeper catches ye lying down, he'll be on to ye. Lying
down's not allowed.'

The man raised himself on his elbow.

'Really now,' he said; 'that's interesting. But I think I'll give the
keeper the opportunity of moving me. Why, it's quite fine, the sun's
coming out, and the sparrows are hopping round--cheeky little devils!
I'm not sure that I don't feel jolly.'

'I wish I'd got the price of a pint about me,' sighed Darkey, and the
o