d communication with me, like other friends,
but, unlike them, had given me up in genuine sorrow: I wrote, and asked
him to meet me privately by night. I was too ragged to go to his house,
too sensitive still (even if I had gone and had been admitted) to risk
encountering people there, who either knew my father, or knew how he
had died. I wished to speak to my former friend, unseen, and made the
appointment accordingly. He kept it.

"When we met, I said to him:--I have a last favour to ask of you. When
we parted years ago, I had high hopes and brave resolutions--both are
worn out. I then believed that I could not only rise superior to my
misfortune, but could make that very misfortune the motive of my rise.
You told me I was too quick of temper, too morbidly sensitive about
the slightest reference to my father's death, too fierce and changeable
under undeserved trial and disappointment. This might have been true
then; but I am altered now: pride and ambition have been persecuted and
starved out of me. An obscure, monotonous life, in which thought and
spirit may be laid asleep, never to wake again, is the only life I care
for. Help me to lead it. I ask you, first, as a beggar, to give me from
your superfluity, apparel decent enough to bear the daylight. I ask you
next, to help me to some occupation which will just give me my bread, my
shelter, and my hour or two of solitude in the evening. You have plenty
of influence to do this, and you know I am honest. You cannot choose me
too humble and obscure an employment; let me descend low enough to be
lost to sight beneath the world I have lived in; let me go among people
who want to know that I work honestly for them, and want to know nothing
more. Get me a mean hiding-place to conceal myself and my history in for
ever, and then neither attempt to see me nor communicate with me again.
If former friends chance to ask after me, tell them I am dead, or gone
into another country. The wisest life is the life the animals lead: I
want, like them, to serve my master for food, shelter, and liberty to
lie asleep now and then in the sunshine, without being driven away as a
pest or a trespasser. Do you believe in this resolution?--it is my last.

"He _did_ believe in it; and he granted what I asked. Through his
interference and recommendation, I entered the service of Mr. Sherwin.--

"I must stop here for to-day. To-morrow I shall come to disclosures of
vital interest to you. Have you be