It's a shilling with ham and eggs." Helmsley paid the humble coin demanded, and wondered where the "starving poor" came in, at any rate in Somersetshire.

Any beggar on the road, making sixpence a day, might consider himself well fed with such a meal.
Just as he drew up his chair to the table, a sudden gust of wind swept round the house, shaking the whole building, and apparently hurling the weight of its fury on the roof, for it sounded as if a whole stack of chimney-pots had fallen.
"It's a squall,"-- said the girl--"Father said there was a storm coming.
It often blows pretty hard up this way." She went out, and left Helmsley to himself.

He ate his meal, and fed Charlie with as much bread and milk as that canine epicure could consume,--and then sat for a while, listening to the curious hissing of the wind, which was like a suppressed angry whisper in his ears.
"It will be rough weather,"-- he thought--"Now shall I stay in Minehead, or go on ?" Somehow, his experience of vagabondage had bred in him a certain restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place.

An inexplicable force urged him on.

He was conscious that he entertained a most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,--that of finding some yet unknown consolation,--of receiving some yet unobtained heavenly benediction.