In an upper room of one of the more respectable houses in one of the
somewhat superior streets of this neighbourhood, a young man stood looking
out of the window one November afternoon. It was then five o'clock, and
the darkness was coming: all day a gentle, never-ceasing rain had been
bringing the soot down from the dark skies upon the already dingy roofs.
It was a dismal and miserable prospect upon which the watcher looked out,
but not so miserable nor so dismal as the situation in which he just then
found himself. The mean street beneath him was not more empty of
cheerfulness than his pockets were empty of money and his stomach of food.
He had spent his last penny on the previous day: it, and two other
coppers, had gone on a mere mouthful of food and drink: since their
disappearance he had eaten nothing. And he was now growing faint with
hunger--and to add to his pains, some one, downstairs, was cooking
herrings. The smell of the frying-pan nearly drove him ravenous.

He turned from the window presently and looked round at the small room
behind him. It was a poor, ill-furnished place--cleanliness, though of a
dingy sort, its only recommendation. There was a bed, and a washstand, and
a chest of drawers, and a couple of chairs--a few shillings would have
purchased the lot at any second-hand dealer's. In a corner stood the
occupant's trunk--all the property he had in the world was in it, save a
few books which were carefully ranged on the chimney-piece, and certain
writing materials that lay on a small table. A sharp eye, glancing at the
books and the writing materials, and at a few sheets of manuscript
scattered on the blotting-pad, would have been quick to see that here was
the old tale, once more being lived out, of the literary aspirant who, at
the very beginning of his career, was finding, by bitter experience, that,
of all callings, that of literature is the most precarious.

A half-hesitating tap at the door prefaced the entrance of a woman--the