HE shuffled along the pavement in front of the shop-windows evidently quite satisfied with himself and his filthy coat, his hands in the ragged pockets of a pair of breeches embroidered with holes, and two dirty heels protruding from hopeless shreds of cowhide. Indeed he must have found it a veritable puzzle to put on these garments, so utterly tattered were they; perhaps they had been assumed in brighter days and never subsequently removed. A venerable felt hat found a precarious resting place upon his matted hair and completed the outfit. About half a dozen yards ahead of me he shuffled, now and then pausing to adjust one of the refractory boots, and he was whistling; I did not recognise the tune, but it sounded lively enough. As the average tramp is not usually a sprightly individual, I became anxious to catch a glimpse of this fellow's countenance, and I pressed on with the intention of coming up to him.

The thoroughfare was Winnipeg Main Street; the time, early evening in May. I had just finished my meal and walked out to take my tobacco and a constitutional.

As I reached the nondescript I turned to get a good look at his profile, while at the same time a cloud of smoke issued from my lips.

I saw

a face which could never have been handsome, while hard living had deprived it of what good appearance it might originally have possessed. Yet it was an intelligent face, though the eyes were heavy and the dirt thick; a scrubby beard spoilt the appearance of what must once have been an

elegant moustache; the eyebrows, I noticed, were unusually thick, and the nose large. I had stopped and might have gazed longer, for the fellow interested me; but I was decidedly taken aback to hear myself suddenly addressed after the following manner : "I presume you are fortifying your memory against the possible danger of not recognising me on the occasion of our next meeting. Also, I must infer by your breach of manners in deliberately puffing smoke into my face, that your delight at seeing me has rendered you temporarily oblivious of ordinary etiquette." This was said in a refined voice. Before I could stir or make reply, another tongue apparently, with an insufferable drawl and unpleasant accent, remarked with hearty familiarity: "Well, boss, and how goes it? Pretty good with you, eh?"

I felt as though a whip-lash had cut me across the back of the neck. "Who the deuce are you?" was all I could answer.

"John Holder, gentleman or blackguard, whichever way you like to take him. I have not a card unfortunately; had I such an article, these garments supply no space for its reception. The voice in which I first addressed you was the outcome of Eton and Christ Church; that in which I subsequently greeted you was a result of my sojourn in this land, the voice, in fact, of the Manitoban Tough, to use the inelegant expression of the native."

The

"I prefer the former," said I. "You have my sympathy. former life was preferable in every But to descend to a baser con

way.

sideration; the tobacco-smoke, which you are still discourteously blowing into my face, is fragrant. It has awakened a hunger in my palate which might be appeased by the trifling gift of a pipeful of that excellent brand."

He drew a short clay pipe from somewhere, while I gravely handed him my pouch. He received it into a toil-marked hand and continued. "Scrape your pipe before borrowing your comrade's pouch. It is an excellent motto, and the consideration at once suggested is, get all you can out of a man, then drop him. I have been dropped in hard places by men who have got little out of me. Here is your pouch; it is lighter, but not materially so." He adjusted an anomalous boot upon his right foot, and turned to me again.

"If you

will provide me with a match, my felicity will touch a point it has not reached for a fortnight, dating back from yesterday. A gentleman, by no means my social equal, laid his cigarcase down in the smoking-room of a certain hotel and, being called away suddenly, forgot it. I extracted the cigars, which were few in number, but excellent in quality. Then I made a hurried though dignified exit."

"Hardly the correct thing to do, was it?"

"At the present moment it would be an actual sin; at that hour it amounted to a natural action bordering closely upon virtue." Seeing my eyebrows rise, he continued: "The explanation is simple. I have told you that I possess two characters, each engaged on different lines in working out the life of one miserable wretch. I have two sets of morals, two voices, two vocabularies, two individualities. Unfortunately I do not own two costumes, but at this time of the year that is a matter of secondary importance. At the moment of annexing the cigars I

was a Manitoban Tough; therefore I was but living up to my character. Now that I am addressing you, I happen to be an English Gentleman. Had I not been, I should have failed to return you that pouch. The distinction is obvious."

I realised by this time that I had really encountered an original character, also a countryman. "Where are you going to?" I asked.

Regarding me loftily, he answered with an air of quiet dignity: "I am at a loss to understand whether satire is intended; if so, your mode of applying the question lacks scholarship. An ordinary individual could see with half an eye that I am going to the Devil, that I am in fact hurrying there."

"I did not intend that. I simply wished to know where you are walking to,—which part of the city." I added the final clause, seeing the need of literal accuracy with this absolute individual.

"Anywhere and nowhere admirably answers your question. I am setting forth from nowhere with the prospect of ending at the same place; in other words I am looking for a spot where I may sleep to-night."

"How have you spent the day?" "Smashing stones, for which labour the City awarded me fifty cents; a despicable amount."

"Then I suppose you have had supper?" I said, feeling myself on dangerous ground.

"I have fared this evening sumptuously," he rejoined in a critical tone. "Had you been at the back of the market rather less than an hour ago, you might have seen a dog sneaking along with a large piece of cooked meat between his jaws. Had you waited a little longer, you would have seen a man come up and wrestle with that dog for the meat, which was as much his as the animal's, for the latter

had probably stolen it and the former of course took the benefit of the doubt. The dog bit the man, but the latter secured the meat. The marks upon this hand will convince you that I was the man in question." He held out his left hand, which was still bleeding, and went on. "I am sorry for the dog, but it was merely a case of the survival of the fittest. We do not go completely to the wall, until we are crushed there and held there by force."

"You have come down pretty low," I muttered involuntarily.

"You are correct," he said with a condescending smile. "The downward descent is rapid, and the nearer the end the swifter the pace."

"But you had your fifty cents," I

ventured.

"It was immediately squandered in a useless and unsatisfactory fashion. There was a woman crying upon the street, declaring that she was heartbroken and starving. She appealed to me, why I cannot guess, for I do not exactly resemble a millionaire in disguise. Of course I had to give her my money, for though I might be starving, I was not heart-broken. The balance of ills rested with her. It was annoying, as I had not the least wish to assist her, but it was necessary from a social point of view. It was but my evil fate that she should have fallen upon me, and not on someone better qualified to sustain the expense."

He made these remarks in a tone of complete indifference, and I began to wonder whether I had stumbled upon a man of genuine intelligence or one wanting in mental capacity. Either way I had quite made up my mind how to act. I am no philanthropist, but I hate to see any man down on his luck, and when the character in question is a countryman, naturally the desire to render some assistance becomes intensified. So I followed up

my thoughts with an invitation: "Come round to my rooms and have a chat."

"You will entertain me, I have no doubt, regally, until an advanced hour to-night. Then I shall have to wander forth to seek a resting-place, doubly discontented with my ill-fortune." He certainly possessed the most remarkable aptitude for discovering extraordinary answers to every question.

"I will give you a shakedown and a decent suit of clothes."

He fingered the tattered coat almost tenderly. "Doubtless the aspersion is deserved," he said thoughtfully; "yet these garments are allegorical. They cling to me like old associations, and as the latter are forgotten, so do the former drop into decay. Their early history has a musty flavour of antiquity. These clothes were perhaps the pride of the tailor's heart, the joy of the customer, whoever he was, for I cannot suppose him to be still alive. They were cut in the accuracy of fashion and fitted with care. Now, alas, they are a sorrow to civilisation and a grief to the eyes of the passer-by. It has been the same with me. long ago I might have been compared to these garments when first made; now they hang partially over all that is left of me, fit emblems of my present state."

Not

Here was a different side to the complex character. Just then he might have been a Hamlet, soliloquising as he fingered the jester's skull. I was about to repeat my invitation, when we turned a street-corner. Immediately a most unmelodious voice broke upon my ear. "Hello, pard, how goes it?" A tramp came slouching towards us. It was my companion who had spoken, but the alteration in voice and manner was so complete that I quite thought it was the newcomer who had given the greeting.

"Bad enough. Nothing to pick up

John ?"

"Pretty tough, I tell you," said my friend. "Guess I'll soon have to deadbeat it South."

"That's no go; they're down on us chaps there."

"Down? Well, darn their hides! I'd like to set a few of them on the road and see what they'd make of it. But can't stay, pard; here's a dude waiting for me. Solong."

"Solong, John." The tramp shuffled off, while my friend, with changed voice and manner, turned to me. 'Upon consideration I will accept your proposal, although a bed and a decently furnished room are well-nigh forgotten luxuries. Have we far to go?"

Evidently he imagined he was the person conferring the favour. I scarcely knew whether to be amazed at his indifference or annoyed at his off-hand treatment of me. "Only another hundred yards or so," I said. "I have my rooms in the King block."

"Not a desirable part of the city to reside in, I should say, nor sufficiently central for general convenience. Still, there are many worse places, as I happen to know. May I trouble you for a match, as my pipe has gone out?"

Arriving at my rooms, I conducted Holder to my bedroom, gave him an outfit, and left him. I should have required a fresh introduction to the individual who stepped into the sitting-room later, had I again chanced suddenly upon him. Having taken the liberty to use my razor, he had mown off his scrubby beard, had curled his moustache, and washed his face. Indeed he looked, as he himself expressed it, more like the English Gentleman than the Manitoban Tough. He stretched himself indolently in my particular easy chair, which I had incautiously vacated, and gazed round

length: "Nice diggings these of yours, though nothing to what mine were at the House. You live here without a wife to bother you, I suppose?"

I replied that I was still single, and asked him what he thought of matrimony.

"A complete failure," he said, with the air of a man whose opinion is worth seeking. "Either the man has to keep the woman, which is annoying, or the woman has to keep the man, which is degrading. If they are both of means, the one possessing the longest bank-account sits on the fence and crows day and night."

He made a few more philosophical remarks bearing upon the same subject, when I broke in with the question, "How long have you been here?"

He glanced at me almost contemptuously, then, reaching out a hand towards my tobacco-jar, said: "The subject is one of such exceeding paucity of interest that I should not have dared to broach it without your invitation." Having filled and lighted one of my pipes with cool deliberation, he continued. "I was educated at Eton, where I was considered the cleverest boy of my time. Never could I have been called popular, as I took no part in athletics, though by certain masters I was pointed at as a model of what a boy should be. During my career there I was never punished for any breach of discipline. Then I went up to Oxford, with the determination of adding to the lustre of laurels already gained. Continuing on the same lines, I read doggedly, took no share in sports, made few friendships, and ended by securing an excellent first classical honours. There my triumph ended, for immediately I had taken my degree I fell to pieces."

in

"How did you manage that?"

I

"I went up to London with money in my pocket and more within reach. There I ruined myself a dozen times over. I had never known what life was, with my nose stuck between the pages of a classical author and my fingers inditing endless notes. plunged wildly into the vortex, whirled round with the other puppets, drank deeply of every pleasure, and the dose was too strong for me. It killed me in every way; socially and intellectually I was a corpse. I shipped over here with what was left of my cash, and since then have been smoothly slipping down an inclined plane."

"And nobody has ever offered to do you a good turn?"

eyes.

He glanced at me sideways with a vindictive gleam in his "You're a man of the world; how is it you haven't learnt the first lesson the world impresses upon you? When you see a man tumbling down hill, you must put out your hand, not to hold him back, but to shove him along faster, so that he may be sooner lost sight of and forgotten."

I saw that I had penetrated to his real nature, and that he had involuntarily been making me his confidant. It was not often subsequently that he subjected his moral constitution to the dissecting-knife of my intellect. "Have you ever tried to obtain employment?"

"Listen, and I will give you a couple of instances, though one is merely a repetition of the other. Soon after I came out, I heard there was a reporter wanted on one of the papers. I applied, along with a rough individual, one I would not have shaken hands with, who looked as though he could not have signed his own name. The editor asked me what my qualifications were and I told him- Oxford man, first-class

classical honours. 'That's all very well,' he said, 'but what experience have you in journalism?' None,' I replied; but I could pick it up in very little time. I can write good English.' 'And stick it full of Latin and Greek quotations that nobody can understand. See here, we don't require good English in our newspaper. We want sharp reports and grammar may slide to the deuce. We want some one who has lots of gall, who can get an interview out of any man, and be everywhere gleaning up the news. You men come out here, with letters dangling after your names and your heads crammed full of rubbish, expecting to snatch up the best positions everywhere. But I tell you straight, fellows such as you are no good at business.' Then he turned to the disreputable being at my side and said, 'Well, sir, are you after the post?' 'Lightning shorthand, with type-written reports if necessary. Five years head-interviewer to WESTERN JOURNAL and only let four men escape me in that time. Here are my papers.' He rattled this out in a single gasp and chucked a bundle of papers upon the editor's desk. 'I guess you'll do,' said the latter, as I slunk away."

I smiled, though I could not blame the editor. Had I been in his place I should have acted in similar fashion.

"Later, when I had dropped a few rungs lower, I applied for a situation as clerk in a wholesale house. The manager, a red-faced, yellow-whiskered buffoon, as usual led off with the miserable question as to qualifications. I returned the stock answer, though with less pride than formerly. 'Oxford,' exclaimed he, pulling at his whiskers. 'Let's see now, where did I hear tell of that place? Down in the States somewhere, ain't it?' 'No; England, of course,' I replied, half bursting with indignation. He