e world now, except the value of his
stock, which was very little; he could get perhaps 3 or 4 pounds by
selling his music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture still
belonged to him. He thought of trying to live by his pen, but his
writing had dropped off long ago; he no longer had an idea in his head.
Look which way he would he saw no hope; the end, if it had not actually
come, was within easy distance and he was almost face to face with actual
want. When he saw people going about poorly clad, or even without shoes
and stockings, he wondered whether within a few months' time he too
should not have to go about in this way. The remorseless, resistless
hand of fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging him down, down,
down. Still he staggered on, going his daily rounds, buying second-hand
clothes, and spending his evenings in cleaning and mending them.

One morning, as he was returning from a house at the West End where he
had bought some clothes from one of the servants, he was struck by a
small crowd which had gathered round a space that had been railed off on
the grass near one of the paths in the Green Park.

It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of March, and unusually
balmy for the time of year; even Ernest's melancholy was relieved for a
while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon
returned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: "It may bring hope to
others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth."

As these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who were
gathered round the railings, and saw that they were looking at three
sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old, which had been penned
off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged the park.

They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom get a chance of seeing
lambs that it was no wonder every one stopped to look at them. Ernest
observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great lubberly butcher
boy, who leaned up against the railings with a tray of meat upon his
shoulder. He was looking at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of
his admiration, when he became aware that he was being watched intently
by a man in coachman's livery, who had also stopped to admire the lambs,
and was leaning against the opposite side of the enclosure. Ernest knew
him in a moment as John, his father's old coachman at Battersby, and went
up to him at once.

"Why, Master Ernest," said