he come, I trove, with a livelier, quicker step the day when, by the
strange good-luck which had uniformly attended his worldly career of
honours, he had been suddenly called upon to supply the place of an
absent senior, and in almost his earliest brief the Courts of Westminster
had recognized a master, come, I trove, with a livelier step, knocked at
that very door whereat he is halting now; entered the room where the
young wife sat, and at sight of her querulous peevish face, and at sound
of her unsympathizing languid voice, fled into his cupboard-like back
parlour, and muttered "Courage! Courage!" to endure the home he had
entered longing for a voice which should invite and respond to a cry of
joy.

How closed up, dumb, and blind looked the small mean house, with its
small mean door, its small mean rayless windows! Yet a FAME had been
born there! Who are the residents now? Buried in slumber, have they any
"golden dreams"? Works therein any struggling brain, to which the
prosperous man might whisper "Courage!" or beats, there, any troubled
heart to which faithful woman should murmur "Joy"? Who knows? London is
a wondrous poem, but each page of it is written in a different language,
--no lexicon yet composed for any.

Back through the street, under the gaslights, under the stars, went Guy
Darrell, more slow and more thoughtful. Did the comparison between what
he had been, what he was, the mean home just revisited, the stately home
to which he would return, suggest thoughts of natural pride? It would
not seem so; no pride in those close-shut lips, in that melancholy stoop.

He came into a quiet square,--still Bloomsbury,--and right before him was
a large respectable mansion, almost as large as that one in courtlier
quarters to which he loiteringly delayed the lone return. There, too,