rd in the night train.

When he walked out into the stony desert in front of the _Gare de
Lyon_ in the grey chill of a March morning, he had just two hundred
and twenty francs in his pocket, and he felt that he was really adrift
in the world. There was nothing for him to hold fast to, no one who
had need of him.

He found a garret room in the _Rue Cherche Midi_, and looked up two
friends of his who were studying at the _Beaux Arts_. They introduced
him to a newspaper correspondent who threw a bit of work in his way--a
fortnightly letter to an Arkansas paper on French fashions and
society, at five dollars _per_ letter. This did not go very far, but
it retarded the melting away of his estate while he finished two
articles,--one on "The Cradle of the French Revolution," the Chateau
of Vezille, which he had visited during his week at the Baths of
Uriage,--the other on "An Eruption of Vesuvius," which had opportunely
occurred while he was in Naples. For the first time in his life he
wrote directly, simply, and naturally, describing what he had really
seen, and expressing what he had really felt and imagined. He sent the
articles to two American magazines and relapsed into a state of doubt
and despair.

He took what Paris has to give a young man in the way of cheap
diversion, but he found it as dusty as New York. The long rambles
through the older parts of the city, the solitary excursions into the
forests of the environs, really satisfied and refreshed him more.
Meantime the feeling that he was adrift grew upon him and his reserve
of capital disappeared. The wolf scratched at the door of his garret
and short rations were necessary. In the second week of May a
remittance arrived from the Arkansas paper for his last two letters,
with the statement that they were not "snappy" enough to suit the
taste of the community, and that the correspondence had better be
discontinued.

So it was that he strode through the Rue de Grenelle in the May
twilight, with fifty francs in his pocket, resolved to spend it all
that night--and then? Well, it was not very clear in his mind, but
certainly he was not going back to his miserable lodging,--and surely
there must be some way of making an end of it all for a man who felt
that he was adrift and very tired,--there was no one to care much if
he dropped out, and he could see no attractive reason for going on.

It was then that he heard the notes of the _humoreske_ coming down
into the deser