As he groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang.

"The pincher," was his thought; "too miserly to burn two cents' worth of gas and save his boarders' necks." He fumbled for the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham.

She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair.

He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes.

Martin Eden never looked at him without experiencing a sense of repulsion.