And what was it for?
What did they give him for that--for all his talent, all his experience, all his skill?
And he did give them all.

His salary was two pounds ten a week! And then, when he told them of all he was doing for them, they had the baseness to remind him of----.

Dearest mother, is not the world hard?
It was that that made me insist that he should leave them.' Alaric's present path was by no means over roses.

This certainly was a change from those days on which he had sat, one of a mighty trio, at the Civil Service Examination Board, striking terror into candidates by a scratch of his pen, and making happy the desponding heart by his approving nod.

His ambition now was not to sit among the magnates of Great Britain, and make his voice thunder through the columns of the _Times_; it ranged somewhat lower at this period, and was confined for the present to a strong desire to see his wife and bairns sufficiently fed, and not left absolutely without clothing.