. Why, if he should drop
himself over into the river, there would be only a ripple. He laughed,
as if his personality was something that did not really belong to him,
that could be put off at will, that was, in truth, answerable to no
power. All of life, then, had been a lie!

He stumbled onward blindly. A sense of dreary mystery crept over
him,--an utter hopelessness. He essayed to stretch out his hand to some
passer-by, but the careless faces mocked him. There was no strength or
stay. He could not even cry out with his anguish,--it was a dumb,
inarticulate voice. All his idols had been destroyed, and there was no
God to cry to!

His last three weeks' salary had gone down in Bristol & Co.'s ruin.
There were some jewels to sell, a few more pictures, several sets of
rare books, and--what then?

Starvation had appeared so utterly improbable in this great, thriving
world, and here he was, almost face to face with it,--he who had never
taken an anxious thought about any thing, who had felt as if he really
honored money by the spending of it. A beggar! An object of charity to
Hamilton Minor!

No, that should never be. He tried to rouse himself from his lethargy.
He went around to stores and offices where he was not known, and asked
for something to do, as if in a curious masquerade. The same answer
everywhere. Nothing! The sun went slowly down, the street-lamps were
lighted. Every inch of his body ached with the long tramp and nervous
exhaustion. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, but he was not hungry.
What if he did steal quietly over to the river, and end it all?

The desperation was hardly black enough for that. Somewhere near
midnight he strolled home: how much longer would there be a home, he
wondered?

He thrust his hand in his pocket, and the bit of folded paper struck
sharp against his fingers, so he drew it out. Hardly the familiar
school-boy scrawl: Jack used to hate writing, he remembered. This had a
decisive force about it. How odd that business-like "John" looked!
"Jack!" He uttered the name aloud, and a thrill seemed to warm his
frozen heart,--to stir emotions most contradictory. A sense of shame
predominated, tingling his very finger-ends, crimsoning his pale cheeks,
and stinging his soul with a sense of utter humiliation. He had prided
himself so much upon the immaculate honor of his life, and lo! here he
stood, self-convicted of one of the basest of sins,--broken faith. Not
from any sudden, hot d