"Well, I've got my aunt's marriage lines; doesn't that prove it? But the Queen she gets 'old of us poor people's money. We've no chance against the rich; we're no scholards--they never larnt us nothing when I was a boy. The man in a paper 'at, that sells whelks in Whitechapel, knows all about it, but he's no scholard neither." Touched by the want of scholarship amongst his friends, I put my attainments at his service, and we went together to claim five hundred pounds in gold, labelled "A. A." on a shelf in the Bank of England. I half hoped that, after the habit of his class, the old man would not "turn up." But when I got out of the train at Broad Street, our place of rendezvous, I saw him waiting at the corner, "cleaned" for the occasion, in a strange old swallow-tail coat that might have figured at stately Court dances when George III was king. On his arm he carried a coarse bag of sacking, not quite cleansed from soot. We attracted no small attention as we passed through the City, and it was quite a relief when the classic walls of the Bank hid us from the vulgar gaze, though it was no small ordeal to face the clerks and explain our errand. But I suppose those gentlemen are used to monetary claims of this kind, and to their eternal honour be it said that they never smiled, not even at the production of the sooty marriage certificate by way of establishing our claim. When at last we passed out again into the roar and glare of the street, the bag provided for the spoil empty as before, I saw the old man draw his sleeve across his eyes, leaving a long sooty trail. "It's no good, ma'am; the poor have no chance against the rich. I didn't even see the bag marked A. A. this time. Most likely the Queen and those gentlemen have spent it all long ago. But I thank you, lady, all the same, and will you allow me to pay your fare for coming down to speak for me?" When his offer was refused, he wrung my hand in silence, and then turned eastwards towards his home. I watched him till he disappeared in the crowd, a forlorn and pathetic figure, not without dignity in his strange old-world garb. AN ALIEN[1]