the victor. The youth acquiesced humorously in the make-believe, slouching round the room with a comical shuffle and a bow to each chair. Then a man got up and began a burlesque lecture on Ecclesiastical Art, "to my young architectural friends;" every reference to apses, groins, or gargoyles was received with yells of delight, a demoniac shriek being reserved for Albrecht Dürer.

"I'm awfully glad I escaped it," said a youth in front of Matt. "I got there five minutes late, and the man wouldn't let me in. At least he said, 'I'm not supposed to let you in after ninefifteen.' But I didn't take the tip or give it."

In the middle of the address on Art, Gurney, coming up the staircase in the wake of a student friend, to whom he had been descanting on the absurdities of Cornpepperism, from which he had now revolted, perceived Herbert, and pushed him boisterously into the room, which straightway became a pandemonium; the pianist banging "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the boys stamping, singing, huzzahing, rattling their glasses, and shouting "Cigars! Drinks! Strang!"

Herbert beamingly ordered boxes of Havannahs and "sodas and whiskies ;" and soon Matt, still in his overcoat, found himself drinking and smoking and shouting with the rest, exalted by the whisky into forgetfulness of his clothes and his fortunes, and partaking in all the rollicking humours of the evening, in all the devil-may-care gaiety of the eternal undergraduate, roaring with his boon companions over the improper stories of the asceticlooking young man with the poetic head, bawling street-choruses, dancing madly in grotesque congested waltzes, wherein he had the felicity to secure Cornpepper for a partner, and distinguishing himself in the high-kicking pas seul, not departing till the final "Auld Lang Syne" had been sung with joined hands in a wildlywhirling ring. Herbert had left some time before.

"Good night, Matt; I want to get away. I don't often get such an excuse for being out late. There's no need for you to go yet, you lucky beggar," he whispered confidentially as he sallied forth, radiantly sober, weaving joyous dreams of his travelling studentship future.

When the party broke up in the small hours, Matt Strang, saturated with whisky and empty of victual, staggered along the frosty pavements, singing to the stars, that reeled round, blinking and winking like the buttons on Herbert's boots.

CHAPTER IX

DEFEAT

His own boots preoccupied Matt's attention ere the New Year dawned. Had Four-toes" continued going to Grainger's, instead of letting his subscription lapse perforce with the Christmas quarter, he might have convinced the class that his toes were normal, for they had begun to peep out despite all his efforts to botch up the seams. The state of his wardrobe prevented him from looking up Herbert at his club, especially as he was doubtful whether the travelling studentship had not already carried his cousin off; and thus that mad night, which was a hot shame to sober memory, grew to seem an unreal nightmare, and Herbert as distant as ever.

In

A vagrant atom of the scum of the city, he tasted all the bitterness of a million-peopled solitude. His quest for work was the more hopeless the shabbier his appearance grew. optimistic after-dinner moods he had thought the spectacle of the streets sufficient, and to feast one's eyes on the pageant of life a cloyless ecstasy; and indeed in the first days of his wanderings the merest artistic touch in the wintry streets could still give him a pleasurable sensation that was a temporary anodyne -the yellow sand scattered on slippery days along the tramlines and showing like a spilth of summer sunshine; the warm front of a public-house making the only spot of colour in the long suburban street; strange faces seen for an instant in fog and lost for ever; snowflakes tumbling over one another in their haste or fluttering lingeringly to earth; red suns, greyringed, like schoolboys' taws-but as the slow days unfolded their sordid unchanging coils, he found himself shrinking more and more into himself. He sought warmth and refuge from reality in the National Gallery or the British Museum, dreaming away the hours before the more imaginative pictures or the Elgin marbles. But even these failed him at last, their beauty an intolerable irony. Sometimes he realised with a miserable start the real tragedy of being "out of work," how it narrowed the horizon down to the prospect of meals, so that

the great movement of the world from which he was shut out left him equally exclusive, and the announcements on the newspaper posters-wars, and international football, and the opening of parks, and new plays, and the deaths of great men, and the rise of ministries-struck no responsive chord in his imagination, were all shadowy emanations from some unreal mockery of a universe. The real universe had his own navel for centre. Sometimes a faint perception of the humour of the position distorted his lips in a melancholy smile; he wondered how he would come out under Jimmy Raven's pencil. At other times he lay huddled up in his bed, his fading clothes heaped over the one blanket, passing the day in an apathetic trance, interrupted only by the intermittent working of his imagination, or by observation of optical effects that accidentally arrested his gaze. And the next day, in remorse for lost possibilities, he would rise before dawn and recommence his search for employment.

From such a long day's tramp he was shuffling homewards late one dark dismal night, when, pausing to warm his feet and hands at the cellar-grating of a baker's shop, he was accosted by William Gregson striding along with a frown on his forehead and a brown-paper parcel in his hand.

"Hullo, Fourt-Strang!" he cried, pausing. "Don't see you any more."

"No," said Matt, wishing Gregson wouldn't see him now, and edging a little away from a street-lamp.

"You don't want any boots?"

"No," said Matt, sticking his toes downwards to hide the gaps as far as possible.

"You won't forget I am at your service whatever you want," said the little, stooping old man, with shining enthusiastic eyes. "It is a pleasure to work for a man with feet like yours. I was only thinkin' of you to-night at the studio-a scurvy wretch has been servin' me a shabby trick, and I was thinkin' to myself, Ah, Four-ah, Strang, there's a difference now! Strang's a man and a brother artist. This bloke's a 'artless biped."

"Why, what did he do?"

And

"There's no need to go into details," said William Gregson pathetically. "Suffice it to say he refuses the boots. here they are. A beautiful pair! Left on my hands! After I sat up half the night to finish 'em for him, trade's so brisk just now."

He unwrapped the package to expose their perfections.

"And what will you do with them?" said Matt.

"I'd like to put 'em on and kick him with 'em,” replied Gregson gloomily. "Only they're too small." Gregson's own feet were decidedly not beautiful.

"Yes, they seem more my size," agreed Matt.

"Will you have them?" cried the old man eagerly. "Name your own price! Don't be afraid. I shan't ask more than last time."

But Matt shook his head. "I'm hard up," he confessed, blushing in the lamplight.

"I'll trust you," was the fervid response.

"I'd never pay you," Matt protested. "Unless I could do something for you in return. If you want," he hesitated, "your shop painted, or any wall-papering, or-or I could build you a counter, or

But the shoemaker was shaking his head. "I don't want my shop painted-but 'ow if you painted me?" he cried, with an inspiration. "I've often tried to do it myself, but some'ow an angelic expression gets into it, and the missus don't recognise it. Have you ever tried doin' your own portrait, Strang?" "No-not seriously," said Matt.

"Well, you try; and see if you don't find it as I say. It's a curious thing how that angelic expression will creep in when a man's paintin' his own portrait. Besides, you can paint better than me; I don't say it behind your back, but

"Then it's a bargain?" interrupted Matt anxiously.

"Yes; I can give you an hour every mornin'. Trade's so slack, unfortunately."

"May I take the boots with me?" inquired Matt.

"Yes, the moment the portrait's done," said Gregson, in generous accents.

“Are you afraid I'll walk off in 'em?" Matt cried angrily. "And suppose they don't fit?"

"Ah, well; you may try them on," conceded Gregson. And, with a curious repetition of a former episode, Matt slipped off his boot under a street-lamp. The boots were a little tight, especially after the yawning laxness of the old; but it was heavenly to stamp on the wet pavement and to feel a solid sole under one's foot, even though an oozy, sloppy stocking intervened.

Gregson perceived the ruin of the vacant boot, and his face grew stern.

"Keep it on, keep it on," he said harshly. "You're an old customer."

"Oh, thank you!" ejaculated Matt.

"You can give me the old pair," he rejoined gruffly. "Oh, but they're past mending," said Matt.

"But they can help to mend other boots. They're like clergymen," said the little shoemaker, laughing grimly. "Nothing is ever wasted in this world."

Matt was thinking so too, though from a different point of view. He was grateful to the economical order of the universe.

The boots reinvigorated the pilgrim on his way to the everreceding Mecca of employment, and each day he sallied forth further refreshed by the bread-and-butter and tea which William Gregson's spouse dispensed after the sittings. All over London he tramped. One day he wandered in hopes of a job among the docks of Rotherhithe, feeling a vague romance in the great grey perspectives of towering wood-stacks with their far-away flavour of exotic forests, and in the sombre canals and locks along which men with cordwain faces were tugging discoloured barges. The desolation of the scene and of the district was akin to his mood-his eyes were full of delicious hopeless tears; he rambled on, forgetting to ask for the job, through the forlorn streets, all ship-chandler shops and one-storey cottages, and threading a narrow passage strewn with lounging louts, found himself on a little floating pier on the bank of the river, and lost himself again in contemplating the grimy picturesque traffic, the bleak wharves and warehouses.

"You see that air barge with the brick-dust sails?"

Matt started; an aged gentleman with a rusty silk hat was addressing him.

"Well, t'other day I see one just like that capsize in calm weather under my very eyes. I come here every day after dinner to watch the water, and I do get something worth seein' sometimes. The pier-master he told me it was loaded with road-slop, and road-slop's alive-shifts the weight on the lurchin' side, you see, and that's 'ow it occurred. There was two men drowned-oh! it's worth while coming here sometimes, I can tell you. You see that green flag off the buoy?— that's where she lays, right in the fairway of the river."

Here the aged gentleman snuffed himself with tremulous fingers that spilt half, and offered Matt the box. The young man took a pinch for exhilaration.

A strayed sparrow hopped dolefully amid the grains of snuff on the floating platform in futile quest of seeds.

"It would be 'appier stuffed," the aged gentleman declared. "I mean with tow, not toke." And he laughed wheezingly.