with, and soiled and crumpled by the
bearer.

"Your grandmother is took bad with one of her attacks. Come back
directly. She wants you badly.

"SAML. TOZER."

This was all that was in it. Mr. May opened it out on his table with a
half-smile of that same superficial amusement which the entire incident
had caused him--the contact, even momentary, of his own household with
that of Tozer, the old Dissenting butterman, was so droll an event. Then
he sank down on his chair again with a sigh, the amusement dying out all
at once, purely superficial as it was. Amusement! how strange that even
the idea of amusement should enter his head in the midst of his despair.
His mind renewed that horrible mechanical wandering through the dismal
circle of might-be's which still survived amid the chaos of his
thoughts. Once or twice there seemed to gleam upon him a stray glimmer
of light through a loophole, but only to throw him back again into the
darkness. Now and then he roused himself with a look of real terror in
his face, when there came a noise outside. What he was afraid of was
poor Cotsdean coming in with his hand to his forehead, and his
apologetic "Beg your pardon, sir." If he came, what could he say to him?
Two days--only two days more! If Mr. May had been less sensible and less
courageous, he would most likely have ended the matter by a pistol or a
dose of laudanum; but fortunately he was too rational to deliver himself
by this desperate expedient, which, of course, would only have made the
burden more terrible upon the survivors. If Cotsdean was to be ruined,
and there was no remedy, Mr. May was man enough to feel that it was his
business to stand by him, not to escape in any dastardly way; but in the
mean time to face Cotsdean, and tell him that he had done and could do
nothing, seemed more than the man who had caused his ruin could bear. He
moved about uneasily in his chair in the anguish of his mind. As he did
so, he pushed off some of his papers from the table with his elbow. It
was some sort of break in his feverish musings to pick them up again in
a bundle, without noticing what they were. He threw them down in a
little heap before him. On the top, as it chanced, came the little dirty
scrap of paper, which ought to have been tossed into the fire or the
waste-paper basket. Saml. Tozer! What was Saml. Tozer to him that his
name should stare him in the face in this obtrusive way? Tozer, the old
butterman! a mean and igno