he felt sure that he was getting worse.  At night he suffered severely; sleep had almost forsaken him.  Hour after hour he lay listening to mysterious noises, strange crackings and creakings through the desolate house; sometimes he imagined the sound of footsteps in the bare rooms below; even hushed voices, from he knew not where, chilled his blood at midnight.  Since crumbs had begun to lie about, mice were common; they scampered as if in revelry above the ceiling, and under the floor, and within the walls.  Goldthorpe began to dislike this strange abode.  He felt that under any circumstances it would be impossible for him to dwell here much longer.

When his last coin was spent, and he had no choice but to pawn or sell something for a few days’ subsistence, the manuscript came back upon his hands.  It had been judged—­declined.

That morning he felt seriously unwell.  After making known the catastrophe to Mr. Spicer—­who was stricken voiceless—­he stood silent for a minute or two, then said with quiet resolve: 

’It’s all up.  I’ve no money, and I feel as if I were going to have an illness.  I must say good-bye to you, old friend.’

‘Mr. Goldthorpe!’ exclaimed the other solemnly; ’I entreat you, sir, to do nothing rash!  Take heart, sir!  Think of Samuel Johnson, think of Goldsmith—­’

’The extent of my rashness, Mr. Spicer, will be to raise enough money on my watch to get down into Derbyshire.  I must go home.  If I don’t, you’ll have the pleasant job of taking me to a hospital.’

Mr. Spicer insisted on lending him the small sum he needed.  An hour or two later they were at St. Pancras Station, and before sunset Goldthorpe had found harbourage under his mother’s roof.  There he lay ill for more than a month, and convalescent for as long again.  His doctor declared that he must have been living in some very unhealthy place, but the young man preferred to explain his illness by overwork.  It seemed to him sheer ingratitude to throw blame on Mr. Spicer’s house, where he had been so contented and worked so well until the hot days of latter August.  Mr. Spicer himself wrote kind and odd little letters, giving an account of the garden, and earnestly hoping that his literary friend would be back in London to taste the Jerusalem artichokes.  But Christmas came and went, and Goldthorpe was still at his mother’s house.

Meanwhile the manuscript had gone from publisher to publisher, and at length, on a day in January—­date ever memorable in Goldthorpe’s life—­there arrived a short letter in which a certain firm dryly intimated their approval of the story offered them, and their willingness to purchase the copyright for a sum of fifty pounds.  The next morning the triumphant author travelled to London.  For two or three days a violent gale had been blowing, with much damage throughout the country; on his journey Goldthorpe saw many great trees lying prostrate, beaten, as though scornfully, by the cold rain which now descended in torrents.  Arrived in town, he went to the house where he had lodged in the time of comparative prosperity, and there was lucky enough to find his old rooms vacant.  On the morrow he called upon the gracious publishers, and after that, under a sky now become more gentle, he took his way towards the abode of Mr. Spicer.