He was now absent from home more than ever, and apparently tried as much as possible to keep the household in the dark as to his movements--leaving at uncertain times, never saying what hour he would be back, or if he said so, never keeping to his word. This was the more annoying as there were a number of people continually inquiring for him, hanging about the house, and waiting to see him "on business;" and some of these occasionally commented on the young gentleman in such unflattering terms that Elizabeth was afraid they would reach the ear of Mrs. Jones, and henceforward tried always to attend to the door herself. But Mrs. Jones was a wide awake woman. She had not let lodgings for thirty years for nothing. Ere long she discovered, and took good care to inform Elizabeth of her discovery, that Mr. Ascott Leaf was what is euphuistically termed "in difficulties." And here one word, lest in telling this poor lad's story I may be supposed to tell it harshly or uncharitably, as if there was no crime greater than that which a large portion of society seems to count as none; as if, at the merest mention of the ugly word debt, this rabid author flew out, and made all the ultra virtuous persons whose history is here told fly out, like turkeys, after a bit of red cloth which is a very harmless scrap of red cloth after all. Most true, some kind of debt deserves only compassion. The merchant suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S. D. to the end of their days. But these are debtors by accident, not error. The deliberate debtor, who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience' sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make "ends meet," but does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as these it is right to have no mercy--they deserve none. To which of these classes young Ascott Leaf belonged his story will show. I tell it, or rather let it tell itself, and point its own moral; it is the story of hundreds and thousands.