itself on mine, with cynical smile; it was
that of my reverend brother, who was evidently
prepared to see me similarly attired,
and when he whispered to my tutor, at his
side, I didn't doubt that he was not increasing
my favour with that dignitary. If I had
been a little nearer I dare say I should have
caught the words, Mauvais sujet. After the
next college examination, indeed, in which
I did not take a very distinguished place, my
tutor sent for me to his rooms, and thus in
his peculiar style delivered himself.

"Mr. Charles Wroughton, your progresss
here is anything but satisfactory to the
authorities; and I should not be doing
my duty, Mr. Wroughton, if— if— if, in
fact, we did not do something. The dean
also informs me, that never having been to
morning chapel for ever so long, we now
find your evening chapels diminishing; besides
you ought to have explained to me— having
been expelled from Eton in so unfortunate a
manner— what the circumstances were. Indeed,
in short, your friends must, I am sorry
to say, be written to with regard to your
removal from the— in point of fact— the
college."

I said, "Don't trouble yourself, sir, to write
to my friends. I will withdraw at once of my
own accord; " and I went straight from his
presence to the Butteries, and took my name
off the books of St. Winifred's. My tutor,
who was far from an unkind, although an ungrammatical
man, would I knew have taken
no such step as this, without the promptings
of some evil tongues. My offences were venial
compared to those of many of my companions,
and had deserved no such punishment.

O what a punishment it was! To have to
meet my dear self-sacrificing mother's face,
and see it pale before the news I had to
tell; to know that from that moment even
in her heart, mistrust and doubt of me began
to grow; and to feel, as I do feel, that
the death which was hanging over her, was
brought down at once by this rude shock!
She now first seemed aware of her precarious
state, and having striven in vain to
sell her annuity, at almost any price, she
wrote to Robert Wroughton (of whose late
wicked deed I had not informed her), to
remind him of the words of his dying father,
and to know if he was willing to do anything
for me. His answer— written by Susan,
instead of himself, under pretence of
press of business— conveyed his opinion that
I ought to be articled to some honest trade;
no definite proposition was mentioned, but
merely that suggestion framed expressly to
make my mother weep. She did not weep
long, kind heart. In three weeks from
that time, I was left (at nineteen), an orphan.
Alone, with my last friend in the churchyard,
I was forced now to look life in the
face. I wanted work, employment of any
kind; but how was I to get it; whom had
I to advise with? My college companions
I determined, wisely, to separate from. The
neighbours who lived in my father's county,
and who had mostly taken our side in the
family quarrel, I was too proud to apply to;
Robert, of course, was out of the question.

I wrote to him for what was due to me,
and he sent me six hundred pounds, the
rest having been deducted for expenses of
my schooling, and even for the purchase of
my little pony, years ago. I do not know
whether he robbed me legally, or not; but
I felt so sure that his prudence would not
have suffered him to do anything criminal,
or actionable, that I took no steps in the
matter. Three hundred pounds. I owed for
bills at college; and, as may be well supposed,
my dear mother had had nothing to
bequeath me. I paid all, therefore, and with
what remained I started to seek my fortune,
whither all other adventurers, from the days
of Whittington, have gone— to London.

I took a cheap and dirty lodging in one
of the streets out of Golden Square, and
stared for some days over its dingy blind, in
hopes of something, somehow, " turning up."
In that great city, without even an acquaintance
to converse with, and with that little
capital, on which alone I could count for
bare subsistence, dribbling away, I was indeed
a pitiable object. No summit of a
Caucasian mountain, no depth of a disused
lead mine, could have been a more solitary
spot to me than that populous town was.

I looked over the Times' advertisements
with those eager eyes which foresee starvation
in the not distant future; I watched for
benevolent old gentlemen in the streets, and
put my trust in those chance adventures,
which are used (in books) to erect colossal
fortunes. At last, a " Wanted a youth of good
appearance and address, as an accountant,"
seemed to present to me the hope of a livelihood.
The situation was to be had in an
office under that little colonnade off Waterloo
Place, which looks as if the opera-house had
been first projected there; but, afterwards,
had been begun again lower down. A darksome
den enough it turned out to be, and the
proprietor of it (whom, however, I never saw
in broad daylight), was horrible to behold.
There was a lurid gleam— if I may say so,
made up of the fire of the worst passions—
for ever playing over his murky countenance.
He never asked me for a reference, but
simply proposed his terms of one pound a-week,
and bade me take them or leave them;
I was in his service for a month or two; but
was employed during that period in such an
unaccountable manner that I cannot say what
I did. I wrote out heaps of law gibberish
for him; I drew up hundreds of forms of " I
promise to pay; " I was made a witness
scores of times to little bill transactions which
I did not understand, between the ogre and
an infinite variety of strange gentlemen. I
took money about for him, to the most diverse
habitations; from the very street where my