now that his business was finished.

He arrived in town late that night; and went back to his office-work next
day with a dreary feeling that he must needs go through the same dull
routine day after day in all the time to come, without purpose or hope in
his life, only because a man must go on living somehow to the end of his
earthly pilgrimage, whether the sun shine upon him or not.

He went to Queen Anne's Court one evening soon after his return, and told
Mr. Nowell all he had discovered at Wygrove. The old man showed himself
keenly interested in his grand-daughter's fate.

"I would give a great deal to see her before I die," he said. "Whatever I
have to leave will be hers. It may be little or much--I won't speak about
that; but I've lived a hard life, and saved where other men would have
spent. I should like to see my son's child; I should like to have some
one of my own flesh and blood about me in my last days."

"Would it not be a good plan to put an advertisement into the _Times_,
addressed to Mrs. Holbrook, from a relation? She would be likely to
answer that, when she would not reply to any appeal coming directly from
me."

"Yes," answered Jacob Nowell; "and her husband would let her come to me
for the sake of what I may have to leave her. But that can't be helped, I
suppose; it is the fate of a man who lives as I have lived, to be cared
for at last only for what he has to give. I'll put in such an
advertisement as you speak of; and we'll see what comes of it."