Thomsen hid a slight yawn, and made a smile of incredulity serve the ends of a salutation of encouragement. “There’s no denying the contagion of your confidence, Leacraft, but really I think that we are all mournfully in the dark as to what we best can do; and in the meanwhile it’s a matter of positive terror what we are going to live on. I brought all the available cash I could for Ethel and myself, but already famine has unfurled its banners, and you know how cramped and shrunk our living has become in London. The Thames alone saves us from starvation. It’s no longer a question of having a bank balance, but the more definite and fundamental one of finding something to buy. “By the by, Balfour closes the debate at ten to-night. You have admission to the gallery of the Commons. Let us go down. It promises to be a fine effort. I only hope it’s not going to be a funeral oration.” Leacraft pulled out his watch and found the time a half-hour after nine. Yes, he would go; in fact he had already engaged a boatman at Blackfriars’ Bridge, to be in waiting for him at almost that very moment. Jim stepped to the window and looked out. The night was pure and clear. Huge hummocks of snow encumbered the streets below, and the moon blazed in the keen sky like some target of disaster. “Weel, Mr. Leacraft, you won’t want me along, and somehow I’d rather sit here and think over your own words, little as I believe it will all come oot so gude-like.” “No, Jim, keep the fire on, and watch out for us, and you might remember to brew us a stiff snack after your own heart; it won’t come amiss.” Jim assented with alacrity, and Leacraft and Mr. Thomsen, muffled up to their ears, and almost hermetically enclosed in fur ulsters, left the room, descended the stairs, and appeared at the doorway on the street. A tolerable path led through a part of Cheapside, but it was not their intention to follow that thoroughfare; they turned towards the church and clambered along a devious footway, that imitated the sinuous and irregular wanderings of a mountain trail. It led them to Ludgate Hill, where they encountered a few other travellers like themselves making their way to the bridge for the same purpose. Bridge street was just passable, and soon the ice-laden waters of the river were seen, blazoned like some spectacle of enchantment in the deluge of argent light. They found the boatman in the basement of the Hotel Royal, which was dead, to the last stories of its ornamented facade, silent and dark. It was a part of the indications that London already had lost its visitors. The barge men stole out of their retreat, and Leacraft and Thomsen followed them, the shadows of the party printed in ink on the winnowed snow. Two men accompanied the boat; one rowed and the other stood at the prow, pushing off the cakes of ice, and correcting the passage of the boat through the lanes of water, flowing like limpid threads of molten silver between the crunching and veering floes.