e and children, with the
exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little
business. Then the thing happened. The son, a man of thirty-one, died
of the smallpox. No sooner was this over than the father came down with
fever and went to the hospital for three months. Then he was done for.
He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his
little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing. The thing had
happened, and the game was up. No chance for an old man to start again.
Friends all poor and unable to help. He had tried for work when they
were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade. "An' I got
fair sick of the answer: 'No! no! no!' It rang in my ears at night when
I tried to sleep, always the same, 'No! no! no!'" Only the past week he
had answered an advertisement in Hackney, and on giving his age was told,
"Oh, too old, too old by far."

The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served
twenty-two years. Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the army;
one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in India after
the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in the East, had
been lost in Egypt. The Carpenter had not gone into the army, so here he
was, still on the planet.

"But 'ere, give me your 'and," he said, ripping open his ragged shirt.
"I'm fit for the anatomist, that's all. I'm wastin' away, sir, actually
wastin' away for want of food. Feel my ribs an' you'll see."

I put my hand under his shirt and felt. The skin was stretched like
parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the
world like running one's hand over a washboard.

"Seven years o' bliss I 'ad," he said. "A good missus and three bonnie
lassies. But they all died. Scarlet fever took the girls inside a
fortnight."

"After this, sir," said the Carter, indicating the spread, and desiring
to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels; "after this, I
wouldn't be able to eat a workhouse breakfast in the morning."

"Nor I," agreed the Carpenter, and they fell to discussing belly delights
and the fine dishes their respective wives had cooked in the old days.

"I've gone three days and never broke my fast," said the Carter.

"And I, five," his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory of it.
"Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of orange peel, an'
outraged nature wouldn't stand it, sir, a