his earlier years as wasted, because they had not been passed in the
city on the Thames. The history of London, the multitudinous life of
London as it lay about him, with marvels and mysteries in every
highway and byway, occupied his mind, and wrought upon his
imagination. Being a stout walker, and caring little for any other
form of exercise, in his free hours he covered many a league of
pavement. A fine summer morning would see him set forth, long before
milk-carts had begun to rattle along the streets, and on one such
expedition, as he stepped briskly through a poor district south of
the river, he was surprised to see an artist at work, painting
seriously, his easel in the dry gutter. He slackened his pace to
have a glimpse of the canvas, and the painter, a young,
pleasant-looking fellow, turned round and asked if he had a match.
Able to supply this demand, Warburton talked whilst the other relit
his pipe. It rejoiced him, he said, to see a painter engaged upon
such a subject as this--a bit of squalid London's infinite
picturesqueness.

The next morning Warburton took the same walk, and again found the
painter at work. They talked freely; they exchanged invitations; and
that same evening Norbert Franks climbed the staircase to Will's
flat, and smoked his first pipe and drank his first whisky-and-soda
in the pleasant room overlooking Ranelagh. His own quarters were in
Queen's Road, Battersea, at no great distance. The two young men
were soon seeing a great deal of each other. When their friendship
had ripened through a twelvemonth, Franks, always impecunious,
cheerily borrowed a five-pound note; not long after, he mirthfully
doubled his debt; and this grew to a habit with him.

"You're a capitalist, Warburton," he remarked one day, "and a