complicity in such a fraud. When poverty began to make itself felt, when
he was actually hampered in his movements by want of money, this form
of indignity, more than any galling to his pride, intensified the
impatience with which he remembered that he could no longer roam the
world as an adventurer. Any day some trivial accident might oppress him
with the burden of a wife and child who looked to him for their support.
Tarrant the married man, unless he were content to turn simple rogue and
vagabond, must make for himself a place in the money-earning world. His
indolence had no small part in his revolt against the stress of such
a consideration. The climate of the Bahamas by no means tended
to invigorate him, and in the United States he found so much to
observe,--even to enjoy,--that the necessity of effort was kept out
of sight as long as, by one expedient and another, he succeeded in
procuring means to live upon without working.

During the homeward voyage--a trial such as he had never known, amid
squalid discomforts which enraged even more than they disgusted him--his
heart softened in anticipation of a meeting with Nancy, and of the
sight of his child. Apart from his fellow-travellers,--in whom he could
perceive nothing but coarseness and vileness,--he spent the hours in
longing for England and for the home he would make there, in castigating
the flagrant faults of his character, moderating his ambitions, and
endeavouring to find a way out of the numerous grave difficulties with
which his future was beset.

Landed, he rather forgot than discarded these wholesome meditations.
What he had first to do was so very unpleasant, and taxed so rudely his
self-respect, that he insensibly fell back again into the rebellious
temper. Choice there was none; reaching London with a few shillings in
his pocket, of necessity he repaired forthwith to Mr Vawdrey's office in
the City, and made known the straits into which he had fallen.

'Now, my dear fellow,' said Mr. Vawdrey, with his usual good-humour,
'how much have you had of me since you started for the Bahamas?'

'That is hardly a fair question,' Tarrant replied, endeavouring not to
hang his head like an everyday beggar. 'I went out on a commission--'

'True. But after you ceased to be a commissioner?'

'You have lent me seventy pounds. Living in the States is expensive.
What I got for my furniture has gone as well, yet I certainly haven't
been extravagant; and for the las