“Oh, what’s they?” said she, and beamed with pleasure.  Hope followed the direction of her blue eyes, open to their full extent; and lo! there was a little fleet of swans coming round a bend of the river.  Hope told her all about the royal birds, and that they belonged to sovereigns in one district, to cities in another.  Meantime the fair birds sailed on, and passed stately, arching their snowy necks.  Grace gloated on them, and for a day or two her discourse was of swans.

At last, when very near the goal, misfortunes multiplied.  They came into a town on a tidal river, whence they could hope to drift down to their destination for a shilling or two; but here Hope spent his last farthing on Grace’s supper at an eating-house, and had not wherewithal to pay for bed or breakfast at the humble inn.  Here, too, he took up the local paper, praying Heaven there might be some employment advertised, however mean, that so he might feed his girl, and not let the fiend Consumption take her at a gift.

No, there was nothing in the advertising column, but in the body of the paper he found a paragraph to the effect that Mr. Samuelson, of Hull, had built a gigantic steam vessel in that port, and was going out to New Zealand in her on her trial trip, to sail that morning at high tide, 6.45 A.M., and it was now nine.

How a sentence in a newspaper can blast a man!  Bereavement, Despair, Lost Love—­they come like lightning in a single line.  Hope turned sick at these few words, and down went his head and his hands, and he sat all of a heap, cold at heart.  Then he began to disbelieve in everything, especially in honesty.  For why?  If he had only left Liverpool in debt and taken the rail, he would have reached Hull in ample time, and would have gone out to New Zealand in the new ship with money in both pockets.

But it was no use fretting.  Starvation and disease impended over his child.  He must work, or steal, or something.  In truth he was getting desperate.  He picked himself up and went about, offering his many accomplishments to humble shop-keepers.  They all declined him, some civilly.  At last he came to a superior place of business.  There were large offices and a handsome house connected with it in the rear.  At the side of the offices were pulleys, cranes, and all the appliances for loading vessels, and a yard with horses and vans, so that the whole frontage of the premises was very considerable.  A brass plate said, “R.  Bartley, ship-broker and commission agent”; but the man was evidently a ship-owner and a carrier besides; so this miscellaneous shop roused hopes in our versatile hero.  He rapidly surveyed the outside, and then cast hungry glances through the window of the man’s office.  It was a bow-window of unusual size, through which the proprietor or his employees could see a long way up and down the river.  Through this window Hope peered.  Repulses had made him timid.  He wanted to see the face he had to apply to before he ventured.