Is ever a life utterly thrown away? It had seemed so when the stones crushed the soul out of that lad. A profitless life had ended unprofitably. But see! Here at the end of Broad Walk, Kensington, that cast-away life was the saving of the girl whom he had loved unprofitably. CHAPTER L. A RAZOR TO CUT CABBAGES. An old man told me one day that he had spent fifty years of his life in making a concordance of the Bible—he had never heard of Cruden’s work. The labour of fifty years thrown away! I know another who sank all his savings in publishing a Law Compendium he had compiled, and when it was published sold two copies. Jingles was going through a heart-breaking experience. He was discovering that all he had acquired in school and university was a disadvantage to him in the position in which he now found himself. He had been well educated, had been polished and sharpened; but the money spent on his education might as well have been thrown into the sea, and the time devoted to learning have been as profitably given up to billiards. This would not have been the case had Giles Inglett Saltren been able to enter a learned profession, but as this was out of the question, his education was profitless. He had been qualified to take his place in a social class in which he was no more able to show himself. One day Jingles had given his razor to a boy to sharpen for him. The lad took it to a grindstone and put an edge to the back. “Please, sir,” said the fellow when reprimanded, “the front was middling sharp, so I thought I’d put an edge to the back.” Jingles remembered this incident now with some bitterness. He had been sharpened on the wrong side for cutting his way. He was a classic scholar, knew his Æschylus and Euripides, and could write elegant Latin verses. He was disciplined in the manners and habits of the upper class. But he knew little of modern languages, and his working out a sum in compound addition left much to be desired. At first he looked out for such a situation as would suit him, but speedily discovered that what he must find was a situation which he would suit. A librarianship, a secretaryship, lastly a tutorship, commended themselves to him as situations for which he was qualified; but such situations are few, and the applicants are legion. The paralytic in the Gospel was always wanting to be let down into Siloam after the troubling of the water, but invariably found that some one else had stepped in whilst he was being carried, or was laboriously dragging himself to the brink. It was so with Jingles. When he did hear of a vacancy that would suit him, and made application for it, it was to find that another had stepped in before him.