"Well, sir," resumed Musgrave, "with the fifty pounds in my pocket, I again appeared upon the streets of London. But a change had passed over me. Even the policemen who before had ordered me to 'walk on' knew me not. I was another man--I was as one on whom fashion shed its sunning influence. I again endeavoured to obtain a situation as an assistant-surgeon, but the attempt was unsuccessful. I should have told you that it was owing to being confined with my wound that I was unable to meet my 'brother in misfortune,' the artist of whom I have spoken. I now tried my fortune as a writer for the magazines, and was paid for what I wrote even liberally, as I considered it. But there was one drawback attending this liberality: though I could write an article for which I received three, four, or seven guineas, in a day (for authors always calculate in guineas, though they are paid in pounds), yet it was not every day, neither was it every month, that I could get such an article accepted; and it was not every magazine that admitted me as a contributor. But by such writing I managed to live; and, as my name became known, I felt less of the misery which I endured when I first embarked in the precarious trade of authorship. Yet a precarious trade I still found it to be. I was enabled to live, but I lived between the hand and the mouth. "The publisher whom I have already mentioned as having given a guinea towards the publishing of my works by subscription, engaged me to translate a novel from the French, and a small work from the Italian, of which language I had but a scanty knowledge. But it does not require the perfect knowledge of a language to be a translator which many consider necessary." "I canna say," said Peter; "I must confess ye are out o' my depths there--but get on wi' your story, for I'm not sure but I may have something to tell ye."