tasks, the weighing, parcel making, string
cutting; the parrot phrases a thousand times repeated; the idiot bowing
and smiling--how these things gnawed at his nerves, till he quivered
like a beaten horse. He tried to console himself by thinking that
things were now at the worst; that he was subduing himself, and would
soon reach a happy, dull indifference; but in truth it was with fear
that he looked forward--fear of unknown possibilities in himself; fear
that he might sink yet more wretchedly in his own esteem.

For the worst part of his suffering was self-scorn. When he embarked
upon this strange enterprise, he knew, or thought he knew, all the
trials to which he would be exposed, and not slight would have been his
indignation had any one ventured to hint that his character might prove
unequal to the test. Sherwood's letter had pleased him so much,
precisely because it praised his resolve as courageous, manly. On
manliness of spirit, Will had always piqued himself; it was his pride
that he carried a heart equal to any lot imposed upon him by duty. Yet
little more than a twelvemonth of shopkeeping had so undermined his
pluck, enfeebled his temper, that he could not regard himself in the
glass without shame. He tried to explain it by failure of health.
Assuredly his physical state had for months been declining and the bad
cold from which he had recently suffered seemed to complete his moral
downfall. In this piercing and gloom-wrapped month of February, coward
thoughts continually beset him. In his cold lodgings, in the cold
streets, in the draughts of the shop, he felt soul and body shrink
together, till he became as the meanest of starveling hucksters.

Then something happened, which rescued him for awhile from this
haunting self. One night, just at closing time--a night of wild wind
and driven rain--Mrs. Hopper came rushing into the shop, her face a
tale of woe. Warburton learnt that her sister "Liza," the ailing girl
whom he had befriended in his comfortable days, had been seized with
lung hemorrhage, and lay in a lamentable state; the help of Mrs.
Allchin was called for, and any other that might be forthcoming. Two
years ago Will would have responded to such an appeal as this with
lavish generosity; now, though the impulse of compassion blinded him
for a moment to his changed circumstances, he soon remembered that his
charity must be that of a poor man, of a debtor. He paid for a cab,
that the two women might spee