Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/14

 a pipe was between his teeth; and while he sucked at it with the devout patience of one to whom it has to serve for everything that the physical side of his nature craved, he stared into the fireless grate with an intensity which can impart a heat and a life of its own.

Now and again after some particularly violent demonstration on the part of the weather he would give a little stoical shudder, fix the pipe in the opposite corner of his mouth, and huddle away involuntarily from the draught that came from under the door.

Northcote was a man of thirty who found himself face to face with starvation. He had been six years at the bar. Friendless, without influence, abjectly poor, he had chosen the common law side. Occasionally he had been able to pick up an odd guinea in the police courts, but at no time had he earned enough to meet his few needs. He was now contemplating the removal of the roof from over his head. Its modest rental was no longer forthcoming; and there was nothing remaining among his worldly possessions which would induce the pawnbroker, the friend of the poor, to advance it.

"I wonder how those poor devils get on who live in the gutter," he muttered, grimly, as he shuddered again. "You will soon be able to find an answer to that question," he added, as he stamped his frozen toes on the hearthstone and beat his fingers against his knees.

Quite suddenly he was lifted out of the abyss of his reflection by the sound of a footfall in the room. Jerking up his head, he peered through the darkness towards the door whence the sound had