Gertrude and Ronald were wed.  Their happiness was complete.  Need we say more?  Yes, only this.  The Earl was killed in the hunting-field a few days after.  The Countess was struck by lightning.  The two children fell down a well.  Thus the happiness of Gertrude and Ronald was complete.

V. —­ A Hero in Homespun:  or, The Life Struggle of Hezekiah Hayloft

“CAN you give me a job?”

The foreman of the bricklayers looked down from the scaffold to the speaker below.  Something in the lad’s upturned face appealed to the man.  He threw a brick at him.

It was Hezekiah Hayloft.  He was all in homespun.  He carried a carpet-bag in each hand.  He had come to New York, the cruel city, looking for work.

Hezekiah moved on.  Presently he stopped in front of a policeman.

“Sir,” he said, “can you tell me the way to——­”

The policeman struck him savagely across the side of the head.

“I’ll learn you,” he said, “to ask damn fool questions——­”

Again Hezekiah moved on.  In a few moments he met a man whose tall black hat, black waistcoat and white tie proclaimed him a clergyman.

“Good sir,” said Hezekiah, “can you tell me——­”

The clergyman pounced upon him with a growl of a hyena, and bit a piece out of his ear.  Yes, he did, reader.  Just imagine a clergyman biting a boy in open daylight!  Yet that happens in New York every minute.

Such is the great cruel city, and imagine looking for work in it.  You and I who spend our time in trying to avoid work can hardly realise what it must mean.  Think how it must feel to be alone in New York, without a friend or a relation at hand, with no one to know or care what you do.  It must be great!

For a few moments Hezekiah stood irresolute.  He looked about him.  He looked up at the top of the Metropolitan Tower.  He saw no work there.  He looked across at the skyscrapers on Madison Square, but his eye detected no work in any of them.  He stood on his head and looked up at the flat-iron building.  Still no work in sight.

All that day and the next Hezekiah looked for work.

A Wall Street firm had advertised for a stenographer.

“Can you write shorthand?” they said.

“No,” said the boy in homespun, “but I can try.”

They threw him down the elevator.

Hezekiah was not discouraged.  That day he applied for fourteen jobs.

The Waldorf Astoria was in need of a chef.  Hezekiah applied for the place.

“Can you cook?” they said.

“No,” said Hezekiah, “but oh, sir, give me a trial, give me an egg and let me try—­I will try so hard.”  Great tears rolled down the boy’s face.

They rolled him out into the corridor.

Next he applied for a job as a telegrapher.  His mere ignorance of telegraphy was made the ground of refusal.

At nightfall Hezekiah Hayloft grew hungry.  He entered again the portico of the Waldorf Astoria.  Within it stood a tall man in uniform.