But his money, economize it as he might, was slowly melting away. Unless he could get work--and all his efforts to find it failed--it would not do to remain in England. At Engelberg had secured a position as a wood carver, and his livelihood was assured. There, too, he possessed a scanty knowledge of the neighbors, and they of him. It would be his wisest course to return there, to forget what he had been, and to draw nearer to him the simple and ignorant people, who might yet be won over to regard him with good-will. This must be done before he found himself penniless as well as friendless. He set aside a certain sum, when that was spent he must once more be an exile. Until then, it was his life to pace to and fro along the streets of London. Somewhere in this vast labyrinth there was a home to which he had a right; a hearth where he could plant himself and claim it for his own. He was master of it, and of a wife, and children; he, the lonely, almost penniless man. It would be a small thing to him to pay the penalty the law could demand of him. A few years more or less in Dartmoor Prison would be nothing to him, if at the end of them he saw a home waiting for him to return to it. But he never sought to look at the exterior even of that spot to which he had a right. He made no effort to see Felicita. He stayed till he touched his last shilling. It was already winter, and the short, dark days, with their thick fogs, made the wintry months little better than one long night. To-morrow he must leave England, never to return to it. He strayed aimlessly about the gloomy streets, letting his feet bear him whither they would, until he found himself looking down through the iron railings upon the deserted yard in front of the Houses of Parliament. The dark mass of the building loomed heavily through the yellow fog, but beyond it came the sound of bells ringing in the invisible Abbey. It was the hour for morning prayer, and Jean Merle sauntered listlessly onwards until he reached the northern entrance and turned into the transept. The dim daylight scarcely lit up the lofty arches in the roof or the farther end of the long aisles, but he gave no heed to either. He sank down on a chair and bent his gray head on the back of the chair before him; the sweet solemn chanting of the white-robed choristers echoed under the roof, and the sacred and soothing tones of prayer floated pest him. But he did not move or lift his head. He sat there absorbed in his own thoughts, and the hours seemed only as floating minutes to him. Visitors came and went, chatting close beside him, and the vergers, with their quiet footsteps, came one by one to look at this motionless, poverty-stricken form, whose face no man could see, but nobody disturbed him. He had a right to be there, as still, and as solitary, and as silent as he pleased.