Sherwood might succeed in bringing him a few hundreds--of the ten thousand Will thought not at all, so fantastic did the whole story sound--but that would be merely another small instalment of the sum due to the unsuspecting victims at St.Neots.
Strictly speaking, he owned not a penny; his very meals to-day were at the expense of his mother and Jane.

This thought goaded him.

His sleep became a mere nightmare; his waking, a dry-throated misery.
In spite of loathing and dread, he began to read the thick-serried columns of newspaper advertisement, Wanted! Wanted! Wanted! Wants by the thousand; but many more those of the would-be employed than those of the would-be employers, and under the second heading not one in a hundred that offered him the slightest hint or hope.

Wanted! Wanted.

To glance over these columns is like listening to the clamour of a hunger-driven multitude; the ears sing, the head turns giddy.