He did not make his appearance before me as I expected, and I lost sight of him for a long while. What new shifts and contrivances he had recourse to--what various phases of poverty and deprivation he became acquainted with during the two years that he was absent from my sight, are secrets which no man can fathom. I was standing at the foot of Blackfriar's Bridge one morning waiting for a clear passage to cross the road, and began mechanically reading a printed board, offering to all the sons of Adam--whom, for the especial profit of the slopsellers, Heaven sends naked into the world--garments of the choicest broadcloth for next to nothing, and had just mastered the whole of the large-printed lie, when my eye fell full upon the bearer of the board, whose haggard but still gentlemanly face revealed to me the lineaments of my old friend Griff. He laughed in spite of his rags as our eyes met, and seized my proffered hand. "And what," said I, not daring to be silent, "do they pay you for this?" "Six shillings a week," said Griff, "and that's better than nothing." "Six shillings and your board of course?" "Yes, this board" (tapping the placarded timber); "and a confounded heavy board it is. Sometimes when the wind takes it, though, I'm thinking it will fly away with me into the river, heavy as it is." "And do you stand here all day?" "No, not when it rains: the wet spoils the print, and we have orders to run under cover. After one o'clock I walk about with it wherever I like, and stretch my legs a bit. There's no great hardship in it if the pay was better." I left my old playmate better resigned to his lowly lot than I thought to have found him. It was clear that he had at length found a function for which he was at least qualified; that he knew the fact; and that the knowledge imparted some small spice of satisfaction to his mind. I am happy to have to state that this was the deepest depth to which he has fallen. He has never been a _sandwich_--I am sure indeed he would never have borne it. With his heavy board mounted on a stout staff, he could imagine himself, as no doubt he often did, a standard-bearer on the battle-field, determined to defend his colors with his last breath; and his tall, gentlemanly, and somewhat officer-like figure, might well suggest the comparison to a casual spectator. But to encase his genteel proportions in a surtout of papered planks, or hang a huge wooden extinguisher over his shoulders labeled with colored stripes--it would never have done: it would have blotted out the gentleman, and therefore have worn away the heart of one whose shapely gentility was all that was left to him.