to simply living in the world upon money which other men have earned.  I must therefore turn to some fresh pursuit for my future career, and surely it would be best that I should do so at once.  What that fresh pursuit is to be I leave to your judgment.  Personally, I think that if I embarked my capital in some commercial undertaking I might by sticking to my work do well.  I feel too much cast down at my own failure to see you to-night, but to-morrow I hope to hear what you think from your own lips.”

“TOM.”

“Perhaps this failure will do no harm after all,” the doctor muttered thoughtfully, as he folded up the letter and gazed out at the cold glare of the northern sunset.

CHAPTER X.

DWELLERS IN BOHEMIA.

The residence of Major Tobias Clutterbuck, late of the 119th Light Infantry, was not known to any of his friends.  It is true that at times he alluded in a modest way to his “little place,” and even went to the length of remarking airily to new acquaintances that he hoped they would look him up any time they happened to be in his direction.  As he carefully refrained, however, from ever giving the slightest indication of which direction that might be, his invitations never led to any practical results.  Still they had the effect of filling the recipient with a vague sense of proffered hospitality, and occasionally led to more substantial kindness in return.

The gallant major’s figure was a familiar one in the card-room of the Rag and Bobtail, at the bow-window of the Jeunesse Doree.  Tall and pompous, with a portly frame and a puffy clean-shaven face which peered over an abnormally high collar and old-fashioned linen cravat, he stood as a very type and emblem of staid middle-aged respectability.  The major’s hat was always of the glossiest, the major’s coat was without a wrinkle, and, in short, from the summit of the major’s bald head to his bulbous finger-tips and his gouty toes, there was not a flaw which the most severe critic of deportment—­even the illustrious Turveydrop himself—­could have detected.  Let us add that the conversation of the major was as irreproachable as his person—­that he was a distinguished soldier and an accomplished traveller, with a retentive memory and a mind stuffed with the good things of a lifetime.  Combine all these qualities, and one would naturally regard the major as a most desirable acquaintance.

It is painful to have to remark, however, that, self-evident as this proposition might appear, it was vehemently contradicted by some of the initiated.  There were rumours concerning the major which seriously compromised his private character.  Indeed, such a pitch had they reached that when that gallant officer put himself forward as a candidate for a certain select club, he had, although proposed by a lord and seconded by a baronet, been most ignominiously pilled.