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weeks later I was out one evening.

Once more I had sat out in a churchyard and worked at an article for one of the newspapers. But whilst I was struggling with it eight o'clock struck, and darkness closed in, and time for shutting the gates.

I was hungry—very hungry. The ten shillings had, worse luck, lasted all too short. It was now two, ay, nearly three days since I had eaten anything, and I felt somewhat faint; holding the pencil even had taxed me a little. I had half a penknife and a bunch of keys in my pocket, but not a farthing.

When the churchyard gate shut I meant to have gone straight home, but, from an instinctive dread of my room—a vacant tinker's workshop, where all was dark and barren, and which, in fact, I had got permission to occupy for the present—I stumbled on, passed, not caring where I went, the Town Hall, right to the sea, and over to a seat near the railway bridge. 84