I smiled.

'Very well. Now, you're a writer. You like to get at the souls of men.
Suppose I show you a bit of mine.'

He had drunk freely of the potent ale, and was now sipping a strong tumbler
of hot whisky. Possibly this accounted in some measure for his
communicativeness.

'Up to the age of five-and-twenty I was clerk in a drug warehouse. To this
day even the faintest smell of drugs makes my heart sink. If I can help it,
I never go into a chemist's shop. I was getting a pound a week, and I not
only lived on it, but kept up a decent appearance. I always had a good suit
of clothes for Sundays and holidays--made at a tailor's in Holborn. Since
he disappeared I've never been able to find any one who fitted me so well.
I paid six-and-six a week for a top bedroom in a street near Gray's Inn
Road. Did you suppose I had gone through the mill?'

I made no answer, and, after looking at me for a moment, Ireton resumed:

'Those were damned days! It wasn't the want of good food and good lodgings
that troubled me most,--but the feeling that I was everybody's inferior.
There's no need to tell you how I was brought up; I was led to expect
better things, that's enough. I never got used to being ordered about. When
I was told to do this or that, I answered with a silent curse,--and I
wonder it didn't come out sometimes. That's my nature. If I had been born
the son of a duke, I couldn't have resented a subordinate position more
fiercely than I did. And I used to rack my brain with schemes for getting
out of it. Many a night I have lain awake for hours, trying to hit on some