mate, out in the States. Look here-here's your money, and something for the little one. And I say, Captain, if you see me drawing the rooks anywhere else, don't blow on me. Good-bye. Come, Frank, let us go and dine. What a good thing a scrimmage is to give one an appetite. I do like a regular British row," said Dick with a sigh; "and one so seldom gets one. Now, over the water, somebody always lets fly a Deringer or pulls out a bowie, and then the fun's spoiled. You've got a clean style, Frank-very clean and finished. I thought we were in for it when I saw the place; so I went on. I was determined you should enjoy yourself thoroughly, old boy."

They had dinner, and talked. Dick's talk was all the same thing. It said

"Take my money. rich. I like to give."

Let me help you. Let me give. I am

Frank, with a proud air put him off, and made him talk of anything but him and his affairs.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH.

STREET, as Frank stepped into it from Dick's hotel, was alive with people, for the night was warm and fine. He bade his rich cousin good night, in his easy pleasant way, never hinting at the sore straits to which he was reduced. Dick was rather inclined to believe, indeed, from what little information he was able to elicit from Frank, that Art paid; -that Frank got a living at it, at all events, he was too proud to be helped when he saw the chance of doing well without help. Now, Dick rather admired this phase of Frank's character-as who would not? Yet he resolved that, when he saw him the next day, he would compel him to disclose the state of his finances and his prospects. While one cousin thought this, the other hesitated a moment in front of

the hotel, remembering suddenly that he had no bed to go to. It was a curious sensation, the most novel he had ever experienced. No bed. Nowhere to go to. No money, or next to none, in his pocket. Nothing at all resembling a home. Even a portable tent, or a Rob Roy canoe, would have been something. He shook himself all over, like a dog. Then he laughed, for he had had a capital day and a good dinner, and he was only five-and-twenty.

66

66

Hang it," he said, a night in the open won't kill one, I suppose. Dick Mortiboy must have had many in his travelling days."

Then he lit a cigar. Dick had forced a dozen upon himwhich, with that curious feeling that permits a man to take anything except money from another, Frank accepted with real gratitude. With his hands in his pockets, and his hat well back on his head, as all old Eton boys wear it, he strolled westward, turning things over in his mind in that resignedly amused frame of mind which comes upon the most unhappy wight after a bottle and a half of claret. Our ancestors, in their kindly brutality, permitted condemned criminals to have a long drink on the way to Tyburn. The punchbowl was brought out somewhere near the site of the Marble Arch; and the condamné, fortified and brightened up by the drink, ascended the ladder with a jaunty air, and kicked off his shoes before an admiring populace;-just as well, it seems to me, as keeping the poor wretch low, and making him feel all his misery up to the very last. Frank, having had his bowl of punch, was about to embark upon that wild and hopeless voyage of despair, which consists in sailing from port to port, looking for employment and finding none. There are certain ships to be met with in the different havens of the world, which are from time to time to be found putting in, "seeking." They never find. From Valparaiso they go to Rio; from Pernambuco to Port Louis; from Calcutta to Kingston; from Havana to Shanghai. They are always roving about the ocean, always "seeking," and always in ballast. Who are their owners; how the grizzled old skipper keeps his crew together; how they pay for the pickled pork and rum in which they delight; how they have credit for repairs to rigging and sails; how the ship is docked, and scraped, and kept afloat-all these things are a profound mystery. After a time, as I have reason for believing, they disappear; but this must be when there is no longer any credit possible, and all

the ports in the world are closed to them. Probably at this juncture the skipper calls together his men, makes the weather-beaten tars a speech, tells them that their long and happy voyages must now terminate, because there is no more pickled pork and no more rum, and discloses to them a longhidden secret. They cheer feebly, set the sails once more, turn her head due North, and steer away to that warm, windless, iceless ocean at the North Pole, where all vagrom ships betake themselves at last, and live together in peace and harmony far from the storms of the world.

Which things are an allegory. Ships are but as men. The North Pole ocean is as that hidden deep where dwell the men who have "gone under." They "go under every day, falling off at each reverse more and more from the paths of honesty. One of them called on me a week ago. I had met him once, and only once, at Oxford, years since. He shook hands with me as with his oldest and best friend; he sat down; he drank my sherry; he called me old fellow; and presently, when he thought my heart was open to the soft influence of pity, he told me his tale, and-borrowed thirty shillings. He went away. Of course, I found that his tale was all a lie. He is welcome to his thirty shillings, with which I have earned the right of shutting my door in the face of a man who has gone under.

Was Frank thinking of all this as he walked through the squares that clear, bright night, among the houses lit up for balls, and the carriages bearing their precious treasures of dainty women? I know not. The thoughts of a man who has but six and sixpence in his pocket, and no bed to go to, are like a child's. They are long, long thoughts. If it is cold and rainy, if he is hungry or ill, he despairs and blasphemes. If it is bright and warm, if he is well-fed and young, he laughs and sings, with a secret, half-felt sinking of the heart, and a looking forward to evil times close at hand.

Along the squares, outside the great houses where the rich, and therefore happy, were dancing and feasting, thinking little enough (why should they?) about the poor, and therefore miserable, outside-beggars came up to Frank. One old man, who looked as if he had been a gentleman, stood in front of him suddenly.

66

"Give me something," he said, bringing his clenched fists down at his sides in a gesture of despair. 'Give me something. I am desperately poor."

Frank put sixpence into his hand and passed on. "Only six shillings left now," he thought.

Women-those dreadful women, all alike, who belong to certain districts of London, and appear only late at nightbegged of him. These women apparently form a class peculiar to themselves. They are neither old nor young. They carry a baby. They are dressed in rusty black. They bear in one hand three boxes of cigar lights. They address you as "good gentleman," and claim to have six starving babies at home, and nothing to put in their mouths. Then the boys with cigar lights ran after him; and then more sturdy beggars, more women, and more boys.

He walked on. It struck ten. Frank's cigar was finished. Just then he passed-it was in one of those dingy, characterless streets, near the great squares-a low-browed, retiringlooking public house. From its doors issued the refrain of a song, the clinking of glasses, and stamping of feet. Frank stopped.

"I've got exactly six shillings," he said. "I may surely have a glass of beer out of that."

He went in and drank his glass. As he drank it, another song, horribly sung, began in the room behind the bar. "Like to go in, sir?" asked the barmaid. "It's quite full. We hold it every Monday evening."

Frank thought he might as well sit down, and see what was going on-particularly as there appeared to be no charge for admission.

It was a long, low room at the back, filled with about thirty men, chiefly petty tradesmen of the neighbourhood. Every man was smoking a long clay pipe, and had a tumbler before him. Every man was perfectly sober, and wore an air of solemnity exceedingly comic. One of the men-the most solemn and the most comic-occupied the chair. By his right stood a piano, where a pale-faced boy of eighteen or so was playing accompaniments to the songs. A gentleman with a red face and white hair was sitting well back in his chair, holding his pipe straight out before him, chanting with tremendous emphasis and some difficulty-because he was short of breath. This, and not an imperfect education, caused him to accentuate his aspirates more strongly than was actually required :

:

"Ho! the ma-hades of me-herry Hengle-land,
How be-hew-ti-ful hare they!"

ance.

Somewhat apart from the rest, not at the table-as if he did not belong to them-sat a man of entirely different appearHe was gorgeously attired in a brown velvet coat and white waistcoat, with a great profusion of gold chain and studs. He was about five-and-forty years of age. His features were highly Jewish, with the full lips and large nose of that Semitic race. His hair, thick and black, lay in massive rolls on an enormous great head-the biggest head, Frank thought, that he had ever seen. In his hand, big in proportion, was a tumbler of iced soda and brandy. He was smoking a cigar, and beating time impatiently on the arm of his chair.

Frank sat modestly beside him, and ordered another glass of beer.

"Know this place, sir ?" asked the man with the big head, turning to him.

"Never saw it before," said Frank.

"No more did I. Queer crib, isn't it? I turned in by accident, because I was thirsty. They'll ask you to sing directly. Do, if you can."

The "Maids of Merry England" died away in the last bars which those who were behind time added to the original melody; and the chairman, taking up his tumbler, bowed to the singer, and said solemnly

"Mr. Pipkin, sir, your health and song."

The company all did the same. Mr. Pipkin wiped his brow, and took a long pull at his gin and water.

"Now," said the chairman, persuasively, "who is going to oblige the company with the next song ?"

Dead silence.

"Perhaps one of the visitors "-here he looked at Frank"will oblige us ?"

"If you can sing, do," growled Bighead.

"Really," said Frank, "I am afraid I hardly know any song that would please; but, if you like, I will sing a little thing I made myself once, words and music too."

"Hear, hear!" said the chair. "Silence, if you please, gentlemen, for the gentleman's song. Gentlemen, the gentleman written it himself."

Frank took the place of the pale-checked musician, and played his prelude. He was going to sing a song which he made at Cambridge, and used to sing at wines and suppers.

"It's only a very little thing," he said, addressing the