Brightly the rays of the ascending sun struck upon the silver-framed portrait on the dressing-table, upon the smiling presentment of the fatuous-faced, shallow-eyed, dead wife. THE EXCELLENT JOYS OF YOUTH "No head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light." He had that delicately tinted infantine complexion which only accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very agreeable mood, for he had been drinking for the last week, and this was the first time he had been thoroughly sober for that period. His head ached, his tongue was hot and leathery; he kept his hands in his trousers-pockets because they shook heavily, and he did not want the lodging-house servant to see. The pockets were quite empty. He could not tell where the last few pounds had gone--if he had lost them at that game of poker he remembered playing before he fell asleep, or if they had been stolen since. He did not remember, and it would be worse than useless to inquire. Not a penny was left to him, and he had not a notion where a penny was to come from--even to pay for the breakfast which he had no appetite to eat. With a heavy gloom upon his face, he stood and looked at the meal spread for him for several minutes before he sat down to table. There was smoked haddock, and he shook his head at it; scrambled eggs, and having looked at the dish he hastily covered it from sight. Beneath the sideboard a few bottles of soda-water were lying. He opened one, and, there being no glass at hand, poured the contents into his breakfast-cup, then drank with a thirst which threatened the cup as well as what it held. Then he sat down to the table and stared at his reflection in the teapot. "God! What a fool I've been," he said. "And what the devil am I to do now?" Two or three letters lay beside his plate; he flicked them apart with his shaking finger. "Bills--bills--bills!" he said. "All bills!" Unopened, he chucked them one by one into the fire, but stopped at the last. "A lawyer's fist," he said, regarding the ominously legal-looking hand-writing. "Someone threatening proceedings again. Let 'em proceed!" He was about to throw that communication also in the fire, but paused in the act, and laid it down by his plate again, putting another plate on the top of it to conceal it from his sight. He took up the knife, old and worn and sharpened at the point, which lay by the loaf of bread, and looked at its edge. "This is how poor old Fleming got out of the scrape," he said. "And Fleming wasn't in a worse hole than I am."