Nature was thus sufficiently relieved to enable the youth to answer the physician's inquiries as to his father's wealth, habits, and so on, with a slight but very significant additional query as to the extent of Ned's remaining stock of money. The conclusion was _not_ any promise of help, but cool advice to remove, forthwith, to a cheaper lodging; or which, the physician remarked, would be far more prudent, to an hospital. The latter alternative Ned could not brook _then_, so he did remove to a cheaper lodging; but his feebleness disappeared so slowly, and the contents of his slender purse so rapidly, that he was compelled to enter an hospital, after discharging his medical attendant's bill, and finding himself possessed but of one sovereign, at the end of another fortnight. For six dreary months Ned Wilcom's feeble state compelled him to remain an inmate of this charitable establishment; and though his wants were amply provided for, and his complaints and sufferings were met with prompt and sympathising kindness and attention, yet his spirit was greatly soured. He ventured one more letter to his father, but it received no greater welcome than the former one; and, in the bitterness of his soul, Ned cursed the parent who could thus treat his child, and resolved never to write home again, as long as he lived. At length, he was strong enough to leave his refuge, and without staying to be told that he must go, he went. Once more, he took a cheap lodging, but a much cheaper one, as far as price went, than before, and in one of the purlieus of Lambeth, where he would have scorned almost to set his foot, when he first arrived in London. Though his scanty sovereign would have recommended instant search for a situation, his great weakness, and his looking-glass, told him he must take, at least, one week's further rest. He took it, and then commenced inquiry for a situation, not at the establishment where his misfortunes commenced, neither at any of the first-rate fashionable shops. Sourness of spirit kept him at a distance from the cathedral churchyard; and the somewhat seedy condition, even of his best suit, debarred his admission, he believed, at any of the "tip-top" houses. So he sought to be engaged in some more humble establishment; but, alas! his pallid face and sunken eye, his hollow voice and feeble step, were against him; and a shake of the head, or a hard stare, with a decided negative, was the invariable answer to his applications.