All through the night until the bright dawn I "jodled" about the streets
and repeated--"Worked out with talent--therefore a little masterpiece--a
stroke of genius--and half-a-sovereign."




Part II


A few weeks later I was out one evening. Once more I had sat out in a
churchyard and worked at an article for one of the newspapers. But whilst
I was struggling with it eight o'clock struck, and darkness closed in, and
time for shutting the gates.

I was hungry--very hungry. The ten shillings had, worse luck, lasted all
too short. It was now two, ay, nearly three days since I had eaten
anything, and I felt somewhat faint; holding the pencil even had taxed me
a little. I had half a penknife and a bunch of keys in my pocket, but not
a farthing.

When the churchyard gate shut I meant to have gone straight home, but,
from an instinctive dread of my room--a vacant tinker's workshop, where
all was dark and barren, and which, in fact, I had got permission to
occupy for the present--I stumbled on, passed, not caring where I went,
the Town Hall, right to the sea, and over to a scat near the railway
bridge.

At this moment not a sad thought troubled me. I forgot my distress, and