wretched-looking hovel, for a human being to dwell in, he could not have imagined.

Mrs. Nicholls was rather deaf, and very poor and miserable. She was out at work all day herself, but she promised to give Robert a bed and to "do" for him. (The boy afterwards found that she expected him to do many things for her, and he was glad to help any one so overloaded with toil as she was, but he was himself over-fatigued with work which was too hard for his strength.)

Thus he began life again for the third time since he left home; and a hard, hard beginning it was. He would not afford himself sufficient food, but was resolute in putting aside fourpence or sixpence weekly; his bed was of the hardest and coldest, but it was the best Mrs. Nicholls had to offer him, and for a better one elsewhere he would have had to pay more. Mrs. Nicholls was a rather crosstempered woman, but Robert managed to please her by being always kind to her cat and obliging to herself.

"There's a many boys takes pleasure in worritin' a poor cat, but you don't," she remarked.

No! Robert would have scorned to worry any dumb creature, and would rightly have accounted it unmanly and wicked.

LONG time has passed since Robert fled so hastily from his home. It is

weeks, months now, since the harvest

was gathered in and the hop-picking was finished. Winter has set in and the country is dreary. Long days of rain, chilly fogs, sharp winds, and then snow and frost, followed by a miserable thaw. But December had come round, and Robert knew such weather must be expected. It did not make him the less miserable, however, as he trudged back from work, through the winter night, to his wretched shelter. Chill tears stood in his sorrowful young eyes, and bitter grief gnawed at his heart, as he thought of the winter evenings of last year; how blithely he had raced home from school through the falling gloom, how bright a fireside awaited him; his mother's kind face and kinder

words; his father, cheery and happy among the little ones; the orderly home; the nice, hot supper; the sense of comfort, well-being, and joy. How many seemed to care for him then; now he was alone, utterly alone,—a stranger in this great, wide, lonely world. How was it to end? How could he go on bearing this lonely misery? He did not think he could be more miserable than he was, but in this he was, alas! mistaken. For now at least he possessed a rough shelter, and food to eat -but he was about to lose both. As he was leaving work next day, the master came up to him :

"We shall have to turn off all the hands we can do without, Watson, now that winter is fairly set in; so you'll have to find other work after Saturday."

There

Other work! where was he to find it? was no work to be had anywhere now! And to be without work meant that he would be without food, without shelter! The poor boy was so stunned that he could answer nothing, except

Very well, sir," as he turned away. This was on a Tuesday-on Saturday he must begin the world again. On Saturday, that was in five days' time. On the Wednesday evening, though it was a bitter night and he was very tired, he trudged off to see

if he could get work in the nearest town, a sort of overgrown village, with shops and private dwellings irregularly built and standing side by side. From house to house Robert went, asking if an errand boy was wanted, a boy to do odds and ends, or anything. But nobody wanted one: "Work's slack just now, you see," was the constant answer he got. By Saturday evening Robert felt worn out, and broken-hearted. He lay still in bed all the Sunday morning (to the astonishment of the people in the cottage), for indeed he was too ill and dejected to rise and go to church, as hitherto he had always done, on Sunday mornings. In the afternoon, though aching all over, he went to the nearest farm and asked if an extra hand was wanted there. But he only received the same reply as elsewhere.

"You see we're getting rid of the extra hands this winter. The country's dead just now."

"I'll go to London! in that big place there must be something, if ever so little, for a willing boy to do," thought Robert.

How he was to get there he soon settled, too, namely, to walk all the way. About London he knew nothing, except that it was a very large place, and that he had always wished to see it. Now, in these sorrowful days, there was but one place

he wished to see, and that was the dear home to which he believed he could never return. Therefore it was no mere wish which made him decide to go to London, but the idea that in so vast a city there must be some kind of work for everybody to do! He himself had known two or three young men go from his own village to live in London, because they had got work there, and they were doing very well, he had heard their friends say. He knew he was about forty miles from London, and he calculated that by walking steadily from eight to ten miles a day, in five days he should be there. Then he reckoned how he should be able to manage with the little money he had. During all these long weeks he had saved latterly, sometimes fourpence, sometimes sixpence a week. He added four fourpences to four sixpences, and found that he had three shillings and fourpence with which to accomplish the journey to London and to begin life anew. By buying a twopenny loaf and some milk, he thought he could get through the first two days' journey; on the third day he would venture to buy some bread, cheese, and beer. By the third day he would be far on his road. Of course he must sleep where he could; many people were kind, and might let him lay down in a barn or outhouse, and even give him