ence. Before long a use was found for his slender medical
attainments; it became one of his functions to answer persons who
visited the office for information as to the climatic features of this
or that new country, and their physical fitness for going out as
colonists. Of course, there was demanded of him a radical
unscrupulousness, and often enough he proved equal to the occasion; but
as time went on, bringing slow development of brain and character, he
found these personal interviews anything but agreeable. He had
constantly before him the spectacle of human misery and defeat, now and
then in such dread forms that his heart sank and his tongue refused to
lie. When disgust made him contemplate the possibility of finding more
honourable employment, the manifest difficulties deterred him.

He held the place for nearly ten years, living in the end so soberly
and frugally that his two hundred pounds seemed a considerable income;
it enabled him to spend his annual month of holiday in continental
travel, which now had a significance very different from that of his
truancies in France or Belgium before he began to earn a livelihood.
Two deaths, a year's interval between them, released him from his
office. Upon these events and their issue he had not counted;
independence came to him as a great surprise, and on the path of
self-knowledge he had far to travel before the significance of that and
many another turning-point grew clear to his backward gaze.

Seeking for a comfortable abode, he discovered these rooms in
Bayswater. They were to let furnished, the house being occupied by a
widow not quite of the ordinary type of landlady, who entertained only
bachelors, and was fairly conscientious in the discharge of her
obligations. Six months later, during Harvey's absence abroad, this
woman died, and on his return the house had already been stripped of
furniture. For a moment he inclined to take a house of his own, but
from this perilous experiment he was saved by an intimation that, if he
were willing to supply himself with furniture and service, an incoming
tenant would let him occupy his old quarters. Harvey grasped at the
offer. His landlord was a man named Buncombe, a truss manufacturer, who
had two children, and seemingly no wife. The topmost storey Buncombe
assigned to relatives of his own--a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Handover,
with a sickly grownup son, who took some part in the truss business.
For a few weeks Rolfe was wa