through the window. Then Richard fell to laughing in his sleep, and
so awoke. He was still confused with the dream as he sat on the edge
of his bed, pulling himself together in the broad daylight.

"Well," he muttered at length, "I shouldn't wonder! There's
nothing too bad to be believed of that man."






VII





Richard made an early start that morning in search of employment,
and duplicated the failure of the previous day. Nobody wanted him. If
nobody wanted him in the village where he was born and bred, a
village of counting-rooms and workshops, was any other place likely
to need him? He had only one hope, if it could be called a hope; at
any rate, he had treated it tenderly as such and kept it for the
last. He would apply to Rowland Slocum. Long ago, when Richard was an
urchin making pot-hooks in the lane, the man used occasionally to pat
him on the head and give him pennies. This was not a foundation on
which to rear a very lofty castle; but this was all he had.

It was noon when Richard approached the marble yard, and the men