are not incompatible with most honourable freedom.  So Hugh worked as hard as he could to finish his novel, and succeeded within a week.  Then the real anxiety began.  He carried it, with much doubtful hope, to one of the principal publishing houses.  Had he been more selfishly wise, he would have put it into the hands of Falconer to negotiate for him.  But he thought he had given him quite trouble enough already.  So he went without an introduction even.  The manuscript was received politely, and attention was promised.  But a week passed, and another, and another.  A human soul was in commotion about the meat that perisheth —­ and the manuscript lay all the time unread, —­ forgotten in a drawer.

At length he reached his last coin.  He had had no meat for several days, except once that he dined at Mrs. Elton’s.  But he would not borrow till absolutely compelled, and sixpence would keep him alive another day.  In the morning he had some breakfast (for he knew his books were worth enough to pay all he owed Miss Talbot), and then he wandered out.  Through the streets he paced and paced, looking in at all the silversmiths’ and printsellers’ windows, and solacing his poverty with a favourite amusement of his in uneasy circumstances, an amusement cheap enough for a Scotchman reduced to his last sixpence —­ castle-building.  This is not altogether a bad employment where hope has laid the foundation; but it is rather a heartless one where the imagination has to draw the ground plan as well as the elevations.  The latter, however, was not quite Hugh’s condition yet. —­ He returned at night, carefully avoiding the cook-shops and their kindred snares, with a silver groat in his pocket still.  But he crawled up stairs rather feebly, it must be confessed, for a youth with limbs moulded in the fashion of his.

He found a letter waiting him, from a friend of his mother, informing him that she was dangerously ill, and urging him to set off immediately for home.  This was like the blast of fiery breath from the dragon’s maw, which overthrew the Red-cross knight —­ but into the well of life, where all his wounds were healed, and —­ and —­ well —­ board and lodging provided him gratis.

When he had read the letter, he fell on his knees, and said to his father in heaven:  “What am I to do?”

There was no lake with golden pieces in its bottom, whence a fish might bring him a coin.  Nor in all the wide London lay there one he could claim as his, but the groat in his pocket.

He rose with the simple resolution to go and tell Falconer.  He went.  He was not at home.  Emboldened by necessity, Hugh left his card, with the words on it:  “Come to me; I need you.”  He then returned, packed a few necessaries, and sat down to wait.  But he had not sat five minutes before Falconer entered.

“What’s the matter, Sutherland, my dear fellow?  You haven’t pricked yourself with that skewer, have you?”