This half-hour’s holiday was not Mr. Thorburn’s only privilege. He had two hours in every day for his own studies--two hours which he generally spent in the public library, for his ambition had shaped itself into a palpable form, and had mapped the outline of a career. He was to be a man of letters. If he had been a rich man, he would have shut himself in his library and made himself a poet. But as he was nothing but a nameless and penniless stripling, with his bread to earn, he had no right to indulge in the luxury of verse-making. The wide arena of literary labour lay before him, and he had no choice but to force his way into the lists, and fight for any place that might happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him what she would--journalist, novelist, dramatist, magazine hack, penny-a-liner: but she must use him very cruelly before she could quench the fire of his young ambition, or bend the crest with which he was prepared to confront the world. He had selected for himself this profession of literature chiefly because it was the only calling which demanded no capital from the beginner, and a little because the only kinsman he had in the world was a man who lived by his pen, and who might have prospered and won distinction by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen to do otherwise. The half-hour’s respite expired presently, and a great clanging bell in the academy near at hand summoned the pupils to their evening lesson. It was a summons for the master also, and Mr. Thorburn ran across the square and turned into the street on which one side of the academy looked. He pushed open a little wooden door in the big gateway, and passed under the arched entrance; but before going to his class-room, he stopped to examine a rack in which letters addressed to the masters were wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at this rack, though he had very few correspondents, and only received about one letter in a fortnight. To-day there was a letter. His heart turned cold as he looked at it, for the envelope was bordered with black, and addressed in the hand of his mother’s brother, who very seldom wrote to him. His mother had been an invalid for a long time, and such a letter as that could have but one fatal meaning. For months he had looked forward to his August holiday, which would enable him to go to England and spend a few happy weeks with that dear mother--and now the holiday would come too late. He went out into one of the dismal playgrounds, a gravelled yard surrounded by high whitewashed walls, and read his letter. His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy paper as he read. Ten minutes ago, walking to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his loneliness, remembering that he had only two friends in the world. He knew now that the dearer of these two was lost to him. The letter told him of his mother’s death.