"I'm only 'on the road,'" he said--"Don't put yourself out too much for me." She smiled. "You'll pay for what you've ordered, I suppose?" "Certainly!" "Then you'll get just what everybody gets for their money,"--and her smile broadened kindly--"We don't make any difference between poor and rich." She retired, and he dropped into a chair, wearily. "We don't make any difference between poor and rich!" said this simple woman. How very simple she was! No difference between poor and rich! Where would "society" be if this axiom were followed! He almost laughed to think of it. A girl came in and brought his coffee with a plate of fresh bread-and-butter, a dish of Devonshire cream, a pot of jam, and a small round basket full of rosy apples,--also a saucer of milk which she set down on the floor for Charlie, patting him kindly as she did so, with many admiring comments on his beauty. "You've brought me quite a breakfast!" said Helmsley. "How much?" "Sixpence, please." "Only sixpence?" "That's all. It's a shilling with ham and eggs." Helmsley paid the humble coin demanded, and wondered where the "starving poor" came in, at any rate in Somersetshire. Any beggar on the road, making sixpence a day, might consider himself well fed with such a meal. Just as he drew up his chair to the table, a sudden gust of wind swept round the house, shaking the whole building, and apparently hurling the weight of its fury on the roof, for it sounded as if a whole stack of chimney-pots had fallen. "It's a squall,"--said the girl--"Father said there was a storm coming. It often blows pretty hard up this way." She went out, and left Helmsley to himself. He ate his meal, and fed Charlie with as much bread and milk as that canine epicure could consume,--and then sat for a while, listening to the curious hissing of the wind, which was like a suppressed angry whisper in his ears. "It will be rough weather,"--he thought--"Now shall I stay in Minehead, or go on?" Somehow, his experience of vagabondage had bred in him a certain restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place. An inexplicable force urged him on. He was conscious that he entertained a most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,--that of finding some yet unknown consolation,--of receiving some yet unobtained heavenly benediction. And he repeated again the lines:-- "Let the sweet heavens endure, Not close and darken above me, Before I am quite, quite sure That there is one to love me!" Surely a Divine Providence there was who could read his heart's desire, and who could see how sincerely in earnest he was to find some channel wherein the current of his accumulated wealth might flow after his own death, to fruitfulness and blessing for those who truly deserved it.