CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
A PLUNGE DOWNWARD.
A chill October squall was whistling through the trees--in Regent's Park, stirring up the fallen leaves on the footpaths, and making the nursemaids, as they listlessly trundled their perambulators, shiver suddenly, and think of the nursery fire and the singing kettle on the hob.

The gathering clouds above sent the park-keeper off to his shed for a waterproof, and emptied the carriage-drive of the vehicles in which a few semi-grand people were taking an afternoon airing at half a crown an hour.

A little knot of small boys, intently playing football, with piled-up jackets for goals, and an old parti-coloured "bouncer" for a ball, were the last to take alarm at the lowering sky; nor was it till the big drops fell in their midst that they scattered right and left, and left the park empty.
No; not quite empty.

One young man sat on through the rain on the seat from which he had been watching the boys' game.

A shabby, almost ragged young man, with a disagreeable face and an almost contemptuous curl of the lips, as the rain, gathering force every second, buffeted him in the face and drenched him where he sat.