The Hound of Heaven

Francis was twenty-four years old with no more idea than a child's of how life is planned on practical lines of prosperity. The senior Thompson thought it time for him to learn and issued orders to find employment of some remunerative kind. Accordingly during the next two years Francis served indifferently for brief periods as a clerk in the shop of a maker of surgical instruments and as a canvasser of an encyclopedia. Both experiments in the art of making a living were failures, increasing paternal dissatisfaction. The desperate young man then enlisted in the army, and after a few weeks' of drilling was rejected on the score of physical weakness.

[Illustration:

I knew how the clouds arise,
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings _Page 51_]

During these shiftless and unhappy years as a listless medi