Greenwood had been insulted by those wealthy citizens who once considered themselves honoured by his notice; and this he might have borne, because he was man of the world enough to know that poverty is a crime in the eyes of plodding, money-making persons.

But to be made the jest of a couple of despicable adventurers—to be jeered at by two knaves for whom he entertained the most sovereign contempt, because their rascalities had been conducted on a scale of mean swindling rather than in the colourable guise of financial enterprise,—to be laughed at and mocked by such men as those, because they happened to have good clothes upon their backs,—Oh! this was a crushing—an intolerable insult!

The unhappy Greenwood felt it most keenly: he writhed beneath the sharp lash of that bitter sarcasm which had been hurled against his shabby appearance;—he groaned under the scourge of those contemptuous scoffs!

Sanguine as his disposition naturally was,—confident as he ever felt in his own talents for intrigue and scheming,—he was now suddenly cast down; and hope fled from his soul.

Not for worlds would he have risked the chance of receiving farther insult that day, by calling at the counting-house of another capitalist!

And now he fled from the City with a species of loathing,—as much depressed by disappointment as he had been elated by hope when he entered it a few hours previously.

He crossed Blackfriars' Bridge, turned into Holland Street, and thence entered John Street, where he knocked timidly at the door of a house of very mean appearance.

A stout, vulgar-looking woman, with carrotty hair, tangled as a mat, overshadowing a red and bloated face, thrust her head out of the window on the first floor.

"Well?" she cried, in an impertinent tone.

"Will you have the kindness to let me in, Mrs. Brown?" said Greenwood, calling to his aid all that blandness of manner which had once served him us a powerful auxiliary in his days of extensive intrigue.

"That depends," was the abrupt reply. "Have you brought any money with you?"

"Mrs. Brown, I cannot explain myself in the street," said the unhappy man, who saw that a storm was impending. "Please to let me in—and——"

"Come—none of that gammon!" shouted the landlady of the house, for the behoof of all her neighbours who were lounging at their doors. "Have you brought me one pound seventeen and sixpence—yes or no? 'Cos, if you haven't, I shall just put up a bill to let my lodgings—and you may go about your business."

"But, Mrs. Brown——"

"Don't Mrs. Brown me!" interrupted the woman, hanging half way out of the window, and gesticulating violently. "It's my opinion as you wants to do me brown—and that's all about it."

"What is it, dear Mrs. Brown?" inquired a woman, with a child in her arms, stepping from the door of the adjoining dwelling to the kerb-stone, and looking up at the window.

"What is it?" vociferated Greenwood's landlady, who only required such a question as the one just put to her in order to work herself into a towering passion: "what is it? Why, would you believe it, Mrs. Sugden, that this here swindling feller as tries to look so much like the gentleman, but isn't nothink more than a Swell-Mob's-man—and that was my rale opinion of him all along—comes here, as you know, Mrs. Sugden, and hires my one-pair back for seven and sixpence a-week——"

"Shameful!" cried Mrs. Sugden, darting a look of fierce indignation upon the miserable Greenwood.

"So it were, ma'am," continued Mrs. Brown, now literally foaming at the mouth: "and though he had his clean pair of calico sheets every fortnight and a linen piller-case which my husband took out o' pawn on purpose to make him comfortable——".

"Dis-graceful!" ejaculated Mrs. Sugden, casting up her eyes to heaven, as if she could not have thought the world capable of such an atrocity.

"And then arter all, that feller there runs up one pound seventeen and six in no time—going tick even for the blacking of his boots and his lucifers——"

Greenwood stayed to hear no more: he perceived that all hope of obtaining admission to his lodging was useless; and he accordingly stole off, followed by the abuse of Mrs. Brown, the opprobrious epithets of Mrs. Sugden, and the scoffs of half-a-dozen of the neighbours.

It was now four o'clock in the afternoon; and Greenwood found himself retracing his way over Blackfriars' Bridge, without knowing whither he was going—or without even having any place to go to.

He was literally houseless—homeless!

His few shirts and other necessaries were left behind at the lodging which had just been closed against him; and a few halfpence in his pocket, besides the garments upon his back, were all his worldly possessions.

"And has it come to this?" he thought within himself, as he hurried over the bridge, not noticing the curiosity excited on the part of the crowd by his strange looks and wildness of manner: "has it come to this at length? Homeless—and a beggar!—a wretched wanderer in this great city where I once rode in my carriage! Oh! my God—I deserve it all!"

And he hurried franticly along—hell raging in his bosom.

At length it suddenly struck him that he was gesticulating violently in the open street and in the broad day-light; and he was overwhelmed with a sense of deep shame and profound humiliation.

He rushed across Bridge Street, with the intention of plunging into one of those lanes leading towards Whitefriars; when a cry of alarm resounded in his ears—and in another moment he was knocked down by a cabriolet that was driving furiously along.

The wheel passed over his right leg; and a groan of agony escaped him.

The vehicle instantly stopped: the livery servant behind sprang to the ground; and, with the aid of a policeman who came up to the spot the instant the accident occurred, the domestic raised Greenwood from the pavement.

But an agonising cry, wrung from him by the excruciating pain which he felt in his right leg, showed that he was seriously injured; and the policeman said, "We must take him to the hospital."

There were two gentlemen in the cabriolet; and one of them, leaning out, said, "What's the matter with the fellow—smite him!"

"Yeth—what ith it all about, poleethman?" demanded the other gentleman, also thrusting forward his head.

Greenwood recognised their voices, and turned his face towards them in an imploring manner: but he suffered too acutely to speak.

"My gwathiouth! Thmilackth," cried Sir Cherry Bounce, who was one of the inmates of the cab: "may I die if it ithn't Gweenwood!"

"So it is, Cherry—strike me!" ejaculated the Honourable Major Dapper. "Here, policeman! see that he's taken proper care of—in the hospital——"

"Yeth—in the hothpital," echoed Sir Cherry.

"Hold your tongue, Cherry—you're a fool," cried the Major. "And, policeman, if you want to communicate with me upon the subject—I mean, if any thing should happen to the poor devil, you know—you can call or write. Here's my card—and here's a guinea for yourself."

"Thanke'e, sir," returned the officer: "but won't you be so kind as to give him a lift in your cab as far as Saint Bartholomew's?"

"Quite out of the quethtion!" exclaimed Sir Cherry.

"Oh! quite," said the Honourable Major Smilax Dapper. "We are engaged to dine at the house of some friends with whom Lady Bounce—that's this gentleman's wife—is staying; and we are late as it is. You must get a stretcher, policeman—strike me! Now then, John!"

"All right, sir!" cried the servant, springing up behind the vehicle.

And away went the cabriolet with the rapidity of lightning.

In the meantime a crowd had collected; and amongst the spectators thus assembled were two individuals who seemed to take a more than common interest in the painful scene.

One was Filippo, who happened to be passing at the moment: but he kept behind the crowd, so that Greenwood might not perceive him.

The other was the hump-back Gibbet, whom accident likewise made a witness of the event, and who, observing the cruel indifference with which the gentlemen in the cab had treated a misfortune caused by themselves, felt suddenly interested in behalf of the victim of their carelessness.

The policeman procured a stretcher; and, with the aid of two or three of the idlers whom the accident had collected to the spot, he conveyed Greenwood to Saint Bartholomew's Hospital.

Filippo hurried rapidly away the moment he saw his late master removed in the manner described; but Gibbet, who, we should observe, was clad in deep mourning, walked by the side of the procession.

Greenwood fainted, through excessive pain, while he was being conveyed to the hospital; and when he came to himself again, he was lying in a narrow bed, upon a hard mattress stretched on an iron framework, while the house-surgeon was setting his leg, which had been broken.