and stirred the soul, Dyck Calhoun kept wondering what would be his
future. He had no profession, no trade, no skill except with his sword;
and as he neared London Town--when they left Hendon--he saw the smoke
rising in the early winter morning and the business of life spread out
before him, brave and buoyant.

As from the heights of Hampstead he looked down on the multitudinous area
called London, something throbbed at his heart which seemed like hope;
for what he saw was indeed inspiring. When at last, in the Edgware Road,
he drew near to living London, he turned to Michael Clones and said:

"Michael, my lad, I think perhaps we'll find a footing here."

So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in
Soho. Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the
barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the
life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future. It was,
however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--"I'm
not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn't go alone without me,
would you?"--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him.

His faithful companion's remark had fixed Dyck's mind against entering
the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful thing
happened. His purse containing what was left of the ninety pounds--two-
fifths of it--disappeared. It had been stolen, and in all the bitter
days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no hint of the
thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed.

Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland. It was from the
firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter