ther mental excitement. He laboured, though not to much
profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for
the Pall Mall Gazette, made woful and savage onslaught on a poem and a
romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain, he
went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the vast
solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more moody. He had
been to more theatres for relaxation. The whole house was roaring with
laughter and applause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him
sad. It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage to
have seen Pen's dismal face. He hardly knew what was happening; the
scene and the drama passed before him like a dream or a fever. Then
he thought he would go to the Back Kitchen, his old haunt with
Warrington--he was not a bit sleepy yet. The day before he had walked
twenty miles in search after rest, over Hampstead Common and Hendon
lanes, and had got no sleep at night. He would go to the Back Kitchen.
It was a sort of comfort to him to think he should see Bows. Bows was
there, very calm, presiding at the old piano. Some tremendous comic
songs were sung, which made the room crack with laughter. How strange
they seemed to Pen! He could only see Bows. In an extinct volcano, such
as he boasted that his breast was, it was wonderful how he should feel
such a flame! Two days' indulgence had kindled it; two days' abstinence
had set it burning in fury. So, musing upon this, and drinking down one
glass after another, as ill luck would have it, Arthur's eyes lighted
upon Mr. Huxter, who had been to the theatre, like himself, and, with
two or three comrades, now entered the room. Huxter whispered to his
companions, greatly to Pen's annoyance. Arthur felt that the other was
talking about him. Huxter then worked through the room, followed by his
friends, and came and took a place opposite Pen, nodding familiarly to
him, and holding him out a dirty hand to shake.

Pen shook hands with his fellow-townsman. He thought he had been
needlessly savage to him on the last night when they had met. As for
Huxter, perfectly at good-humour with himself, and the world, it never
entered his mind that he could be disagreeable to anybody; and the
little dispute, or "chaff," as he styled it, of Vauxhall, was a trifle
which he did not in the least regard.

The disciple of Galen having called for "four stouts," with which he and
his party refreshed