desire to marry immediately, and to put his
trust in Providence; and Constance went
back to her cottage home at Audley End,
making up her mind, as the young ladies say,
to a very long engagement.

The lover vacated his apartment the next
term for one more suitable to his new position,
beneath the attic of his friend, and set
himself resolutely to his college duties
Leonard was trying for a fellowship, and
Brooke for a scholarship. Both failed.

Gray, indeed, was not eminent either in
classics or mathematics; although he took a
good double degree. Persey had still too
many expensive acquaintances, whom he
wanted firmness to utterly shake off; too
much liking for the pianoforte, and too much
trust in cramming and extempore genius.
His three letters, and one ride a-week to the
little cottage at Audley End, did not help
him; neither did his morbid thoughts upon
his altered condition. He could not master
himself sufficiently to forget the splendours
aud comforts of Hilton Hall, despite its
accompanying servitude. He hankered after
the flesh-pots, notwithstanding the Egyptian
bondage. Living with what he considered
exemplary economy, he far exceeded his income
while he remained at college; and although
the proceeds of his furniture and the sale of his
two horses which Sir William would not hear
of receiving back amply covered that expense,
there seemed no great likelihood of
his making both ends meet for the future.

Leonard had been readily appointed one of
the assistant masters at the High School of
Chilturn, through the recommendation of his
tutor; but Brooke, although by no means a
bad scholar, had no such influence, even had
he been inclined for a like position; the
other alternative of wise old Doctor Wild he
would not take:

             Into some country village
                 Now I must go,
           Where neither tithe nor tillage
                 The greedy patron
                 And parched matron
           Swear to the church they owe;
Yet, if I can preach and pray too on a sudden,
And confute the pope at adventure, without studying,
Then ten pounds a-year, besides a Sunday pudding:
            Alas! poor scholar! whither wilt thou go?

Brooke decided upon authorship. He
published, on leaving college, an unfinished
poem of some merit, but great bitterness,
entitled DEPENDENCE, A SATIRE, and it had a
little success —- that is to say, for a poem. A
considerable number of copies were bought by
his college friends, a score of them sent to
the reviews, and a good many given away.

One of these, in red morocco, was sent to
Constance Gray, we may be sure, with an
extra sonnet, by way of dedication, in the
poet's own hand-writing; and one of them,
through the intervention of a good-natured
friend, got down to Hilton, and was regarded
by the fierce old Baronet as a personal
lampoon; which, despite appearances, it was
never meant to be. No letter nor the slightest
communication had been received from
Sir William, since the interview in Brooke's
rooms, save a deed, which had been forwarded
by the family lawyer, securing to him his
hundred and fifty pounds for life. The gap
seemed never likely to be healed.

From Granta the poet removed to lodgings
in town, and sat himself down in a more
systematic method than might have been
expected to his new work. He gave up, in
the first place, writing verses, having soon
discovered that, even in the happy chance of
an editor printing them, poetry, like virtue,
was its own reward. He concocted,
principally, strange weird-like tales, enough to
frighten the very printers' devils; but Editor
"declined" them "with thanks." He then tried
those smaller deer with illustrations, which
have such incredible circulations at one and
fourpence a-piece, with a reduction when
bought by the dozen. In these he generally
succeeded. Under the name of the Modern
Brutus, he produced one or two startling
sketches of our social system. With the
exception, however, of one pound fourteen and
sixpence in silver—brought in an envelope
by an editor himself, for fear of
accidents —he received nothing for his services.
It was something indeed, to be puffed and
placarded in staring colours at railway
stations and steamboat piers, but still it
was not enough to marry on. The
letters to the little cottage grew shorter and
rarer; their phrases began to have a warmed-up
character. The charming little notes
in answer, were suffered to remain
un-opened for hours; and, when read, they
lay about the table unsealed. Squarish
envelopes with vulgar wafer-seals, seemed, on
the other hand, to possess an increasing interest.
These he answered sometimes on
the instant, and always with great pains.
His constant visits to all places of
amusement,— for professional purposes, Brooke
declared, in order to make articles out of
them—dipped considerably into his scanty
purse; his extravagant habits were,
generally, little changed, and, in short, neither
love nor money were now in great abundance
with him. For all these misfortunes he did
not become less proud, and was boastful
enough, poor fellow, upon what few hits he
made; nay, when Leonard Gray, in the course
of a few years, was elected head-master of
Chilturn, and had it in his power to offer
Brooke the position he had himself quitted,
the proposal was rejected rather scornfully.

One day, a long tale of his, in which, as he
thought, he had put forth his best powers,
came back to his lodgings from a
magazine-office, rejected. It was the drop that filled
his cup of bitterness to the brim; and,
at night, he left the house, and strode out
into the roaring streets, with rage at his
heart. Although he had taken Nil Desperandum