nin',' which I'm agreed to myself,
though it seems to me the two are more or less mixed up. Howsomever,
it's all up now, my boy; you'll have to fight your own battle and pay
your own way, for I've not got one shillin' to rub on another, except
what'll pay the rent; and, what with the grey mare breakin' her leg
an' the turnips failin', the look-out ahead is darkish at the best."

The letter finished with some good advice and a blessing.

To be left thus without resources, just when the golden gates of
knowledge were opening, and a few dazzling gleams of the glory had
pierced his soul, was a crushing blow to the poor student. If he had
been a true philosopher, he would have sought counsel on his knees, but
his philosophy was limited; he only took counsel with himself and the
immediate results were disastrous.

"Yes," said he, with an impulsive gush, "I'll go to sea."

"Don't," said his quiet friend.

But, regardless of this advice, Edwin Jack smote the table with his
clenched fist so violently that his pen leapt out of its ink-bottle and
wrote its own signature on one of his books. He rose in haste and rang
the bell.

"Mrs Niven," he said to his landlady, "let me know how much I owe you.
I'm about to leave town--and--and won't return."

"Ech! Maister Jack; what for?" exclaimed the astonished landlady.

"Because I'm a beggar," replied the youth, with a bitter smile, "and I
mean to go to sea."

"Hoots! Maister Jack, ye're jokin'."

"Indeed I am very far from joking, Mrs Niven; I have no money, and no
source of income. As I don't suppose you would give me board and
lodging for nothing, I mean to leave."

"Toots! ye're haverin'," persisted Mrs Niven, who was wont to treat her
"young men" with motherly familiarity. "Tak' time to think o't, an'
ye'll be in anither mind the morn's mornin'. Nae doot ye're--"

"Now, my good woman," interrupted Jack, firmly but kindly, "don't bother
me with objections or advice, but do what I bid you--there's a good
soul; be off."

Mrs Niven saw that she had no chance of impressing her lodger in his
present mood; she therefore retired, while Jack put on a rough
pilot-cloth coat and round straw hat in which he was wont at times to go
boating. Thus clad, he went off to the docks of the city in which he
dwelt; the name of which city it is not important that the reader should
know.

In a humble abode near the said docks a bulky sea-captain lay stretched
in his hammo