Poor Beck swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunken man,
and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of his
benefactor's garment, and fairly wept. Those tears relieved him; they
seemed to wash the drought of despair from his heart.

"Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us. You'll not forget, my
poor friend, No.---- Curzon Street,--nine to-morrow. Make haste now, and
get food and rest; you look, indeed, as if you wanted them. Ah, would to
Heaven all the poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, and we
could aid it as easily as I can thee!"

Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and looking back, he
had the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly crawling after him, and
had escaped the grim question of a very portly policeman, who had no
doubt expressed a natural indignation at the audacity of so ragged a
skeleton not keeping itself respectably at home in its churchyard.

Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival found a small
knot of politicians in eager conversation respecting a new book which had
been published but a day or two before, but which had already seized the
public attention with that strong grasp which constitutes always an era
in an author's life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature. The
newspapers were full of extracts from the work,--the gossips, of
conjecture as to the authorship. We need scarcely say that a book which
makes this kind of sensation must hit some popular feeling of the hour,
supply some popular want. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, therefore,
its character is political; it was so in the present instance. It may be
remembered that that year parliament sat during great part of the month
of October, that it was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejected by
the House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had never been so