day laborer might have found a foot-hold. A man without handicraft
was not in request in Stillwater. "What is your trade?" was the
staggering question that met Richard at the threshold. He went from
workshop to workshop, confidently and cheerfully at first, whistling
softly between whiles; but at every turn the question confronted him.
In some places, where he was recognized with thinly veiled surprise
as that boy of Shackford's, he was kindly put off; in others he
received only a stare or a brutal No.

By noon he had exhausted the leading shops and offices in the
village, and was so disheartened that he began to dread the thought
of returning home to dinner. Clearly, he was a superfluous person in
Stillwater. A mortar-splashed hod-carrier, who had seated himself on
a pile of brick and was eating his noonday rations from a tin can
just brought to him by a slatternly girl, gave Richard a spasm of envy.
Here was a man who had found his place, and was establishing--what
Richard did not seem able to establish in his own case--a right to
exist.

At supper Mr. Shackford refrained from examining Richard on his
day's employment, for which reserve, or indifference, the boy was
grateful. When the silent meal was over the old man went to his
papers, and Richard withdrew to his room in the gable. He had
neglected to provide himself with a candle. Howwever, there was
nothing to read, for in destroying Robinson Crusoe he had destroyed
his entire library; so he sat and brooded in the moonlight, casting a
look of disgust now and then at the mutilated volume on the hearth.
That lying romance! It had been, indirectly, the cause of all his
woe, filling his boyish brain with visions of picturesque adventure,
and sending him off to sea, where he had lost four precious years of