broad thoroughfare continued where once it had vanished abrupt in a hibyrinth of courts and alleys. But the way was not hard to find. He turned a little toward the left,' recognizing, with admiring interest, in the ga}'^ white would-be Grecian edifice, with its French ^r///<?, bronzed, gilded, the transformed Museum, in the still libraries of which he had sometimes snatched a brief and ghostly respite from books of law. Onward yet through lifeless Bloomsbury, not so far toward the last bounds of Atlas as the desolation of Poddon Place, but the solitude deepening as he passed. There it is, a quiet street indeed! not a soul on its gloomy pavements—not even a policeman's soul. Naught stirring save a stealthy, profligate, good-for-nothing cat, flitting fine through yen area bars. Down that street had he come, I trow, with a livelier, quicker step the day when, by the strange good luck which had uniformly attended his worldly career of honors, he had been suddenly called upon to supply the place of an absent senior, and, in almost his earliest brief, the Courts of Westminster had recognized a master; come, I trow, with a livelier step, knocked at that very door whereat he is halting now; entered the room where the young wife sat, and at sight of her querulous peevish face, and at sound of her unsympathiz- ing languid voice, fled into his cupboard-like back-parlor—and muttered " courage "—courage to endure the home he had entered, longing for a voice which should invite and respond to a cr}' of joy.
How closed up, dumb, and blind, looked the small mean house, with its small mean door, its small mean rayless windows. Yet a Fame had been born there! Who are the residents now .? Buried in slumber, h2M& they any "golden dreams?" Works therein any struggling brain, to which the prosperous man might whisper " courage; " or beats, there, any troubled heart to which faithful woman should murmur " joy? " Who knows? London is a wondrous poem, but each page of it is written in a different language; no lexicon yet composed for any.
Back through the street, under the gaslights, under the stars went Guy Darrell, more slow and more thoughtful. Did the comparison between what he had been, what he was, the mean home just revisited, the stately home to which he would return, suggest thoughts of natural pride .-' it would not seem so; no pride in those close-shut lips, in that melancholy stoop.
He came into a quiet square—still Bloomsburj'—and right before him was a large respectable mansion, almost as large as that one in courtlier quarters, to which he loiteringly delayed the lone return. There, too, had been, for a time, the dwelling
