A quarter of an hour’s rapid walking from his father’s door, took Zack well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets—his available assets consisted of a handsome gold watch and chain—his only article of baggage was a blackthorn stick—and his anchor of hope was the Pawnbroker¹.

His first action, now that he had become his own master, was to go direct to the nearest stationer’s shop that he could find, and there to write the penitent³ letter to his mother over which his heart had failed him in the library at Baregrove Square. It was about as awkward, scrambling⁴, and incoherent an epistolary production as ever was composed. But Zack felt easier when he had completed it—easier still when he had actually dropped it into the post-office along with his other letter to Mr. Valentine Blyth.

The next duty that claimed him was the first great duty of civilized⁵ humanity—the filling of an empty purse. Most young gentlemen in his station of life would have found the process of pawning⁶ a watch in the streets of London, and in broad daylight, rather an embarrassing one. But Zack was born impervious⁷ to a sense of respectability. He marched into the first pawnbroker’s he came to with as solemn an air of business, and marched out again with as serene⁸ an expression of satisfaction, as if he had just been drawing a handsome salary, or just been delivering a heavy deposit into the hands of his banker.

Once provided with pecuniary⁹ resources, Zack felt himself at liberty to indulge forthwith in a holiday of his own granting. He opened the festival by a good long ride in a cab, with a bottle of pale ale and a packet of cigars inside, to keep the

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