offered to every enterprising bread-seeker,
chances so promising at the first glance,
so barren and so full of rottenness when they
came to be tested! Clerkships? Clerkships
galore! legal, mercantile, general clerks
were wanted everywhere, only apply to
A. B. or Y. Z., and take them! But when
A. B. or Y. Z. replied, Walter Joyce found
that the legal clerks must write the regular
engrossing hand, must sweep out the office
ready for the other clerks by nine A.M., and
must remain there occasionally till nine P.M.,
with a little outdoor work in the service of
writs and notices of ejectment. The duties
required of the mercantile clerk were but
little better, and those of the general clerks
were worst of all, while throughout a net
income of eighteen shillings a week appeared
to be the average remuneration.
"A secretary wanted." Certainly, four secretaries
wanted nearly every day, for public
companies which were about to bring forth
an article in universal demand, but of
which the supply had hitherto been limited,
and which could not fail to meet with an
enormous success and return a large dividend.
In all cases the secretary must be
a man of education and of gentlemanly
manners, so said the advertisements; but
the reply to Walter Joyce's application,
said in addition that he must be able to
advance the sum of three hundred pounds,
to be invested in the shares of the company,
which would bear interest at the
rate of twenty-five per cent per annum.
The Press? Through the medium of their
London fraternity the provincial press was
clamorous for educated men who could
write leading articles, general articles and
reviews; but on inquiry the press required
the same educated men to be able to combine
shorthand reporting with editorial
writing, and in many cases suggested the
advisability of the editorial writer being
able to set up his own leaders in type at case.
The literary institutions throughout the
country were languishing for lecturers, but
when Walter Joyce wrote to them, offering
them a choice of certain subjects which he
had studied, and on which he thought himself
competent of conveying real information,
he received answers from the secretaries,
that only men of name were paid by the
institutions, but that the committee would
be happy to set apart a night for him if he
chose to lecture gratis, or that if he felt
inclined to address the inhabitants of
Knuckleborough on his own account, the
charge for the great hall was three pounds,
for the smaller hall thirty shillings a night,
in both cases exclusive of gas, while the
secretary, who kept the principal stationer's
shop and library in the town, would be
happy to become his agent, and sell his
tickets at the usual charge of ten per cent.
Four pounds a week, guaranteed! Not a
bad income for a penniless man; to be
earned, too, in the discharge of a light and
gentlemanly occupation, to be acquired by
the outlay of three shillings' worth of
postage stamps. Walter Joyce sent the
postage stamps, and received in return a
lithographic circular, very dirty about the
folded edges, instructing him in the easiest
method of modelling wax flowers!

That was the final straw. On the receipt
of that letter, and on the reading of it—
he had taken it from the stately old looking-
glass over the fire-place to the box
where of late he usually sat—Walter Joyce
gave a deep groan, and buried his face in
his hands. A minute after he felt his hair
slightly touched, and looking up saw old
Jack Byrne bending over him.

"What ails ye, lad?" asked the old
man, tenderly.

"Misery—despair—starvation!"

"I thought so!" said the old man calmly.
Then taking a small battered flask from
his breast and emptying its contents into a
clean cup before him—" Here, drink this,
and come outside. We can't talk here!"

Walter swallowed the contents of the
cup, mechanically, and followed his new
friend into the street.

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

"SHE is positively starving, and this money
will be the saving of her."

These words were spoken in the course of a
conversation between my old friend Mr. John
Irwin, retired civil-servant, and myself; both
sitting on a fine September morning in a little
summer-house, in the garden of our mutual
friend the Rev. Henry Tyson, Rector of Northwick-
Balham, in the county of Berkshire. The
subject of our conversation had been a piece
of very flagitious behaviour on the part of a
wealthy retired tradesman, Harding by name,
who lived in the neighbourhood. A sum of
money, amounting to a hundred pounds, was
owing by this man to a widow, living also
close at hand, for work done by her husband,
just before he died. The validity of the claim
had been denied by Mr. Harding, and payment
obstinately refused.

"I have made it all right, however," said niy
friend, with something approaching to a chuckle.
"It happens that this Harding is to a certain
extent in my power. The particulars of a
transaction in which he was engaged some