Hope, in its last agony, was suddenly recalled to new life. He came home from his daily drudgery one evening, thoroughly tired, even a little disheartened; ‘discouraged,’ as the American lady described herself, when she confessed to poisoning eight of her relations, simply because she began to regard them as encumbrances, and feared that, if permitted to live, they might reduce her to poverty. On this particular evening the star of science—that grand and ever-sustaining idea that he was to sow the seed of some new truth in the broad field of scientific progress—waxed paler than usual, and Lucius also was discouraged. He came home bodily and mentally tired. He had been tramping to and fro all day under a drizzling rain, and in a leaden atmosphere laden with London smoke. Even in that shabby ill-built domicile which he called home, sorry comfort awaited him. His ancient serving-woman, Mrs. Babb, had let the parlour fire go out. The kettle, which, singing on the hob above a cheerful blaze, seemed almost a sentient thing, now leaned on one side disconsolately against a craggy heap of black coal, like a vessel aground upon a coral reef. The tray of tea-things—the neat white cloth indicative of chop or steak—adorned not his small round table. Mrs. Babb, absorbed in the feminine delights of a weekly cleaning, had suffered herself to become unconscious of the lapse of time. He gave the loose, ill-hung bell-wire an angry jerk, flung himself into his accustomed arm-chair, and stretched out his hand haphazard in search of a book. Plato, Montaigne, Sterne, any philosopher who should teach him how to hear the petty stings of the scorpion—daily life. But before his hand touched the volumes, its motion was arrested. He beheld something more interesting than Plato, since in all probability it concerned himself, namely, a letter, at a corner of the mantelpiece, just on a level with his eye. Egotism triumphed over philosophy. The letter, were it even a bill, was more vital to him for the moment than all the wisdom of Socrates. He snatched the envelope, which was directed in a rugged uncompromising caligraphy, unfamiliar to him. He tore it open eagerly, and looked at the signature, ‘Homer Sivewright.’ ‘Dear Sir,—When you obliged me with your assistance the other day, I believe I made some profane remark about your profession, which you took in good part. One forgives such gibes from a testy old man. You told me that when I found myself ill, my thoughts would naturally tend towards Savile-row. There you were wrong. I do find something out of gear in my constitution—possibly liver—or perhaps general break-up. But instead of thinking of the high-flyers of the West-end, with their big fees and pompous pretensions, I think of you.