e the worse for one of
those solid slices of bread and butter.'

The stall-keeper was just extinguishing his lights; the frosty sky
showed a pale gleam of sunrise.

'Hard times, I'm afraid,' remarked Yule, as his beneficiary began to eat
the luncheon with much appearance of grateful appetite.

'Very hard times.' He had a small, thin, colourless countenance, with
large, pathetic eyes; a slight moustache and curly beard. His clothes
were such as would be worn by some very poor clerk. 'I came here an
hour ago,' he continued, 'with the hope of meeting an acquaintance who
generally goes from this station at a certain time. I have missed
him, and in doing so I missed what I had thought my one chance of a
breakfast. When one has neither dined nor supped on the previous day,
breakfast becomes a meal of some importance.'

'True. Take another slice.'

'I am greatly obliged to you.'

'Not at all. I have known hard times myself, and am likely to know
worse.'

'I trust not. This is the first time that I have positively begged.
I should have been too much ashamed to beg of the kind of men who are
usually at these places; they certainly have no money to spare. I was
thinking of making an appeal at a baker's shop, but it is very likely I
should have been handed over to a policeman. Indeed I don't know what I
should have done; the last point of endurance was almost reached. I have
no clothes but these I wear, and they are few enough for the season.
Still, I suppose the waistcoat must have gone.'

He did not talk like a beggar who is trying to excite compassion, but
with a sort of detached curiosity concerning the difficulties of his
position.

'You can find nothing to do?' said the man of letters.

'Positively nothing. By profession I am a surgeon, but it's a long time
since I practised. Fifteen years ago I was comfortably established at
Wakefield; I was married and had one child. But my capital ran out, and
my practice, never anything to boast of, fell to nothing. I succeeded
in getting a place as an assistant to a man at Chester. We sold up, and
started on the journey.'

He paused, looking at Yule in a strange way.

'What happened then?'

'You probably don't remember a railway accident that took place near
Crewe in that year--it was 1869? I and my wife and child were alone in
a carriage that was splintered. One moment I was talking with them, in
fairly good spirits, and my wife was laughing at something I had said;
t