of itself--meantime patience.
Two things are certain. I am capable of performing the work Mr.
Crimsworth has set me; I can earn my wages conscientiously, and those
wages are sufficient to enable me to live. As to the fact of my brother
assuming towards me the bearing of a proud, harsh master, the fault is
his, not mine; and shall his injustice, his bad feeling, turn me at once
aside from the path I have chosen? No; at least, ere I deviate, I will
advance far enough to see whither my career tends. As yet I am only
pressing in at the entrance--a strait gate enough; it ought to have a
good terminus." While I thus reasoned, Mr. Crimsworth rang a bell; his
first clerk, the individual dismissed previously to our conference,
re-entered.

"Mr. Steighton," said he, "show Mr. William the letters from Voss,
Brothers, and give him English copies of the answers; he will translate
them."

Mr. Steighton, a man of about thirty-five, with a face at once sly and
heavy, hastened to execute this order; he laid the letters on the
desk, and I was soon seated at it, and engaged in rendering the English
answers into German. A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first
effort to earn my own living--a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened
by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some
time as I wrote. I thought he was trying to read my character, but I
felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with
the visor down-or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence
that one would show an unlearned man a letter written in Greek; he might
see lines, and trace characters, but he could make nothing of them; my
nature was not his nature, and its signs were to him like the words of
an unknown tongue. Ere long he turned away abruptly, as if baffled, and
left the counting-house; he returned to it but twice in the course of
that day; each time he mixed and swallowed a glass of brandy-and-water,
the materials for making which he extracted from a cupboard on one side
of the fireplace; having glanced at my translations--he could read both
French and German--he went out again in silence.

CHAPTER III.

I SERVED Edward as his second clerk faithfully, punctually, diligently.
What was given me to do I had the power and the determination to do
well. Mr. Crimsworth watched sharply for defects, but found none; he set
Timothy Steighton, his favourite and head man, to watch also. Tim was
baffled;