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ERGEY MATVEITCH MOSHKIN dined very well to-day—comparatively, of course—as a man reckons who has spent a year on other people's doorsteps and stairs searching for a job. He has dined well, but all the same the hungry gleam still remains in his sorrowful dark eyes, and gives to his lean and swarthy face an expression of unwonted significance.

Moshkin spent on his dinner his last six shilling note, and there rattled in his pocket only a few coppers, and in his purse a worn fourpenny bit. He made a feast and made merry, though he knew that it was stupid to rejoice, premature and unfounded. But he had sought work so hard and had come to such a pass that he was ready to rejoice even at the phantom of hope.

Moshkin had lately put an advertisement in the Novoe Vremya. He had advertised himself as a schoolmaster with literary gifts.