little surprised to receive a second letter from his son so soon, for "he had no notion," as he used to say, "of lads perpetually writing home, like unweaned babies that wanted pap;" and he, therefore, broke the seal of poor Ned's letter with no remarkable degree of good humour. The length of the letter, when opened, caused the money-getting father to throw it aside with an indescribable curl of the lip and nose, and a loud "Pshaw!"—and that was all the attention the poor youth's epistle received for the five next succeeding days, that is to say, until Sunday came, and the merchant thought he had time to look at it. The next morning Ned Wilcom received his father's answer: it was simply—

"Sir,

"Yours came to hand last Monday. If your illness was brought on by want of caution, it ought to teach you prudence. If you have been unlucky, you are only like many more; and, as your grandfather used to say, the best way and the manliest, with troubles, is to grin and abide by them. Wish you better.

  "Your humble servant,
    "Edward Wilcom, senior.

The letter dropped from Ned's hand like a lump of lead too heavy to hold. With all his knowledge of his father's nature and habits, he had not expected this. Indeed, Ned's uninterrupted good health, through the whole of his brief space of life, had prevented the possibility of his testing his father's tenderness before. For some hours, the youth experienced misery he had never known till then; and was so completely paralysed with the sense of his wretched and deserted state, that the physician, who made his usual call in the afternoon, could obtain no intelligent answer to his questions; and though by no means one whose heart overflowed with the milk of human kindness, felt constrained, in a sympathising tone, to ask if any thing extraordinary had occurred to his patient. Ned pointed to the letter which lay on the floor, and in spite of the hardness of feeling into which he had trained himself, burst into a flood of tears.

Nature was thus sufficiently relieved to enable the youth to answer the physician's inquiries as to his father's wealth, habits, and so on, with a slight but very significant additional query as to the extent of Ned's remaining stock of money. The conclusion was not any promise of help, but cool advice to remove, forthwith, to a cheaper lodging; or which, the physician remarked, would be far more prudent, to an hospital. The latter alternative Ned could not brook then, so he did remove to a cheaper lodging; but his feebleness disappeared so slowly, and the contents of his slender purse so rapidly, that he was compelled to enter an hospital, after discharging his medical attendant's bill, and finding himself possessed but of one sovereign, at the end of another fortnight.

For six dreary months Ned Wilcom's feeble state compelled him to remain an inmate of this charitable establishment; and though his wants were amply provided for, and his complaints and sufferings were met with prompt and sympathising kindness and attention, yet his spirit was greatly soured. He ventured one more letter to his father, but it received no greater welcome than the former one; and, in the bitterness of his soul, Ned cursed the parent who could thus treat his child, and resolved never to write home again, as long as he lived.

At length, he was strong enough to leave his refuge, and without staying to be told that he must go, he went. Once more, he took a cheap lodging, but a much cheaper one, as far as price went, than before, and in one of the purlieus of Lambeth, where he would have scorned almost to set his foot, when he first arrived in London. Though his scanty sovereign would have recommended instant search for a situation, his great weakness, and his looking-glass, told him he must take, at least, one week's further rest. He took it, and then commenced inquiry for a situation, not at the establishment where his misfortunes commenced, neither at any of the first-rate fashionable shops. Sourness of spirit kept him at a distance from the cathedral churchyard; and the somewhat seedy condition, even of his best suit, debarred his admission, he believed, at any of the "tip-top" houses. So he sought to be engaged in some more humble establishment; but, alas! his pallid face and sunken eye, his hollow voice and feeble step, were against him; and a shake of the head, or a hard stare, with a decided negative, was the invariable answer to his applications.

To shorten the melancholy story of his deeper descent into wretchedness—at the end of the tenth week after his departure from the hospital, he was so far restored to strength as to be able to walk upright, to speak in his natural tone of firmness, and would have been competent to have discharged the duties of a draper's assistant in any shop in the metropolis; but every article of clothing he had possessed, except two shirts, two pairs of stockings, and the outer suit he constantly wore, were all in pawn, and he was, now, absolutely—penniless!

It was when the eleventh week began, and the dreaded Monday morning returned, when his weekly lodging-rent should be paid, that Ned stealthily descended from his attic, and passed, unobserved by his landlady, from the front door, to wander he knew not whither—except to avoid shame. By the Marsh Gate he passed, and through the New Cut, and over Blackfriars' Bridge, and, losing the remembrance of where he was, he wandered from street to street, till, suddenly, in Old Street, he was awoke to the sense of delight—a feeling he had long been a stranger to—by seeing a half-crown at the edge of the pavement, as he sauntered along with his head dropped on his chest. He snatched it up with inconceivable eagerness: no one was near to whom he could suppose it belonged, had his necessity permitted him to think of asking for its proper owner; and galled by a complete abstinence of two whole days, he hurried to the very first appearance of food that met his eye—a stall of coarse shell-fish.

"How d'ye sell them?—what d'ye call them?" were the questions he put to the poor ragged man who stood by this stall of strange vendibles that Ned had seen poverty-stricken children and females stand to eat, but had never tasted them himself.

"Ve calls 'em vilks, sir," answered the man, "six a penny: shall I open ye a penn'orth o' fresh uns, sir?"

"Oh! these will do—let me have a dozen," said Ned Wilcom, and seized, and devoured a couple in a moment.

"La! stop, sir!" cried the man—"you vants winegar to 'em!"—and he took the old broken bottle of earthenware, with the cork and a hole in it, and would fain have poured some of the horrible adulteration upon the shell-fish, but the very smell of it was too much for the youth's senses. He devoured the dozen; but though the first mouthful had seemed delicious, he had some difficulty in gulping the last; and had not proceeded twenty paces from the stall, after receiving the change for his half-crown, before he felt half overcome with sickness and nausea. He was about to pass by a dram-shop—but the thought suddenly struck him that a small glass of brandy would dispel the sickness; and he stepped in and called for one. An elderly female was sipping a very small glass of liquor, when Ned crossed the threshold, but passed out immediately, after giving him a keen glance, as he gave his call, and laid a shilling on the dram-shop counter. By this woman he was immediately accosted, when he quitted the dram-shop:—

"Have you taken coffee this morning, sir?" said she, with a short courtesy: "I shall be happy to accommodate you, if you have not, sir: my