Leonard could not have returned to the cottage, even if the Famine that
faced had already seized him with her skeleton hand. London releases not
so readily her fated step-sons.




CHAPTER IV.

One day three persons were standing before an old bookstall in a passage
leading from Oxford Street into Tottenham Court Road. Two were
gentlemen; the third, of the class and appearance of those who more
habitually halt at old bookstalls.

"Look," said one of the gentlemen to the other, "I have discovered here
what I have searched for in vain the last ten years,--the Horace of 1580,
the Horace of the Forty Commentators, a perfect treasury of learning, and
marked only fourteen shillings!"

"Hush, Norreys," said the other, "and observe what is yet more worth your
study;" and he pointed to the third bystander, whose face, sharp and
attenuated, was bent with an absorbed, and, as it were, with a hungering
attention over an old worm-eaten volume.

"What is the book, my lord?" whispered Mr. Norreys. His companion
smiled, and replied by another question, "What is the man who reads the
book?"

Mr. Norreys moved a few paces, and looked over the student's shoulder.
"Preston's translation of Boethius's 'The Consolations of Philosophy,'"