een seen in a certain railway carriage as the Folkestone
train reached its destination. The Cannon Street platform was, as usual,
the scene of bustle and confusion, most of the passengers were met by
friends or relatives, others formed a complete party in themselves, and,
with the exception of the elderly man, there was scarcely a unit
among them. The fact of his loneliness would not, of course, have been
specially remarkable had it not been that he was evidently in the last
stage of some painful illness; he was also a foreigner and, not being
accustomed to the English luggage system, he had failed to secure a
porter as the train drew up and so, while the others were fighting their
way to the van, he, who needed assistance more than any of them, was
left to shift for himself. He moved with great difficulty, dragging
down from the carriage a worn black bag, and occasionally muttering to
himself, not as a peevish invalid would have done, but as if it were a
sort of solace to his loneliness.

"The hardest day I've had, this! If I had but my Herzblattchen now, how
quickly she would pilot me through this throng. Ah well! Having managed
to do the rest, I'll not be beaten by this last bit. Potztausend! These
English are all elbows!"

He frowned with pain as the self-seeking crowd pushed and jostled him,
but never once lost his temper, and at length, after long waiting,
his turn came and, having secured his portmanteau, he was before long
driving away in the direction of Bloomsbury. His strength was fast
ebbing away, and the merciless jolting of the cab evidently tried him
to the utmost, but he bore up with the strong endurance of one who knows
that at the end of the struggle relief awaits him.

"If he is only at home," he muttered to himself, "all will be well.
He'll know where I ought to go; he'll do it all for me in the best way.
ACH! Gott in himmel! But I need some one!"

With an excruciating jerk the cab drew up before a somewhat grim-looking
house; Had he arrived at the himmel he had just been speaking of, the
traveler could not have given an exclamation of greater relief. He
crawled up the steps, overruled some question on the part of the
servant, and was shown into a brightly lighted room. At one glance he
had taken in the whole of that restful picture so welcome to his sore
need. It was a good sized room, lined with books, which had evidently
seen good service, many of them had been bought with the price of
foregon