the hut, and persuaded him to come and sit out in the warmth.

By this time the wretched man's condition was pitiable, for, though his
strength was still whole in him, he was persuaded that he was going to
die, and could touch nothing but some rum-and-water.

"Miss Smithers," he said, as he sat shivering upon the rocks, "I am going
to die in this horrible place, and I am not fit to die! To think of me,"
he went on with a sudden burst of his old fire, "to think of me dying
like a starved dog in the cold, when I have two millions of money waiting
to be spent there in England! And I would give them all--yes, every
farthing of them--to find myself safe at home again! By Jove! I would
change places with any poor devil of a writer in the Hutches! Yes, I
would turn author on twenty pounds a month!--that will give you some idea
of my condition, Miss Smithers! To think that I should ever live to say
that I would care to be a beggarly author, who could not make a thousand
a year if he wrote till his fingers fell off!--oh! oh!" and he fairly
sobbed at the horror and degradation of the thought.

Augusta looked at the poor wretch and then bethought her of the proud
creature she had known, raging terribly through the obsequious ranks of
clerks, and carrying desolation to the Hutches and the many-headed
editorial department. She looked, and was filled with reflections on the
mutability of human affairs.

Alas! how changed that Meeson!

"Yes," he went on, recovering himself a little, "I am going to die in
this horrible place, and all my money will not even give me a decent
funeral. Addison and Roscoe will get it--confound them!--as though they