f what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
myself of your permission, knowing your good heart. Since I saw you
I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
tell what door is left at which I have not knocked. I presented
myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
Is this not very much in the English character? They told me to
write, and said they would forward the letter. I put all my hopes in
you.
Believe me, my dear sir,
(whatever you may decide)
Your devoted
LOUIS FERRAND.

Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week ago.
The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking, sensitive;
the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly, the whole
whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his memories
of Antonia. It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres to London
that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.

He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row. Dismissing his cab at the
corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in question.
It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in other words, a
"doss-house." By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with a sliding
window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with soap-suds on
her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking for had gone
without leaving his address.

"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make inquiry?"

"Yes; there's a Frenchman." And opening an inner door she bellowed:
"Frenchy! Wanted!" and disappeared.

A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular impression
of some little creature in a cage.

"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto. What do you
want with him, if I may ask?" The little man's yellow cheeks were
wrinkled with suspicion.

Shelton produced the letter.

"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
crow's-feet--"he spoke of you. 'If I can only find him,' he used to say,
'I 'm saved.' I liked that young man; he had ideas."

"Is there no way of getting at him