mother had sent him a cheque by post. He tore it up and
went out of his cheap lodging-house without breakfast.
There was a queer change in him--a sudden lofty
independence--a sudden loathing of himself. He knew now
that it was not in him to do good work in the world, but
at least he would pay his own way. He had been a mass of
vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he
shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain had
damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous
centre--I do not know what change a physician would have
found in him, but the man was changed.

A clerk was needed in a provision shop on Green
Street. George placed himself in the line of dirty,
squalid applicants. The day was hot, the air of the shop
was foul with the smells of rotting meat and vegetables.
He felt himself stagger against a stall. He seemed to be
asleep, but he heard the butchers laughing. They called
him a drunken tramp, and then he was hurled out on the
muddy pavement.

"Too much whiskey for this time o' day!" a policeman
said, hauling him to his feet.

"Move along, young man!"

Whiskey? That was what he wanted. He turned into a shop
and bought a dram with his last pennies. It made him
comfortable for a few hours, then he began to cry and
swear. George Waldeaux had never been drunk in his life.