Ah me! what a dull world it seems nowadays! The King gone, and everything changed--everything--everything! I am a very old man, Mary Anne." He was fifty-two years of age; he felt quite an old man.

He had spent all his money, he had outlived the best friends of his youth; for it had been his fate to adorn a declining era, and he had been a youngster among elderly patrons and associates.

His patrons were dead and gone, and the men he had patronised shut their doors upon him in the day of his poverty.

As for his relations, he had turned his back upon them long ago, when first he followed in the shining wake of that gorgeous vessel, the Royal George.

In this hour of his penniless decline there was none to help him.