orth anything, they would not have dared to turn him out of
the "Star." He was done for, and might as well pack up and go.

And now he looked forward to contemplate the destined straight and
narrow path, an uncounted series of empty, dull, dead days, and at the
end of it death--of which he thought sometimes with longing, sometimes
with an angry shudder. It was all settled, nailed down and prescribed,
unmistakable and inevitable. There was no longer any possibility of
falsifying a balance-sheet or forging a paper, of turning himself into
a stock-company, or by tortuous paths through bankruptcy sneaking out
again into life. He was no longer a firm or a name--only a worn-out old
man before whom the abyss of the infinite opened in all its terror,
with the grisly skeleton silently grinning at him to cut off his
retreat. Though the manufacturer had been accustomed to many different
kinds of circumstances and knew how to find his way about in them,
these were different. Now he tried to wave them away with weak gestures
of his old arms, now he buried his face in his hands, shut his eyes,
and trembled with fear of the unescapable hand which he felt descending
to grasp him.

The good-hearted Finkenbein, coming gradually to suspect that all
manner of ghosts were closing in upon the manufacturer, sometimes gave
him an encouraging word, or clapped him on the shoulder with a
consoling laugh. "I say, Mr. Councillor, you oughtn't to study so much.
You're quite clever enough--in your time you got the best of plenty of
rich and clever people, didn't you? Don't be cross, millionaire--I
don't mean any harm. It's just my little joke--man, think of the holy
text up over your bed!" And he would spread out his arms with a
pastoral dignity, as if in blessing, and recite with unction, "Little
children, love one another!"

"Or, wait a bit," he would say again, "we'll start a savings-bank, and
when it's full we'll buy from the town its shabby poorhouse, and take
the sign out and make the old "Sun" rise again, so as to get some oil
into the machine once more. What do you say to that?"

"If we only had five thousand marks--" Huerlin would begin to reckon;
but the others would laugh, and he would break off, heave a sigh, and
return to his brooding.

When winter had fully come, they saw him getting more silent and
restless. He had fallen into the habit of wandering in and out of the
room, sometimes grim, sometimes with a look of terror, sometimes