icle against the order of the
black-coated gentleman who was travelling with them in the carriage),
and Pen thanked him and took it, and pursued his reverie, without
reading two sentences of the journal.

"And yet, would you take either of those men's creeds, with its
consequences?" he thought. "Ah me! you must bear your own burthen,
fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own
prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or
who could understand all? Who can tell another's shortcomings, lost
opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which
incapacitate reason?--what extent of truth and right his neighbour's
mind is organised to perceive and to do?--what invisible and forgotten
accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have
altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand may alter it, as the
flinging of a pebble may end it. Who can weigh circumstances, passions,
temptations, that go to our good and evil account, save One, before
whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask absolution? Here
it ends," thought Pen; "this day or to-morrow will wind up the account
of my youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad history, with many a page
I would fain not look back on! But who has not been tired or fallen, and
who has escaped without scars from that struggle?" And his head fell on
his breast, and the young man's heart prostrated itself humbly and sadly
before that Throne where sits wisdom, and love, and pity for all, and
made its confession. "What matters about fame or poverty!" he thought.
"If I marry this woman I have chosen, may I have strength and will to be
true to her, and to make her happy. If I have children, pray God teach
me to speak and to do the truth among them, and to leave them an honest
name. There are no splendours for my marriage. Does my life deserve
any? I begin a new phase of it; a better than the last may it be, I pray
Heaven!"

The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these reflections; and
he handed over the newspaper to his neighbour, of whom he took leave,
while the foreign clergyman in the opposite corner still sate with his
eyes on his book. Pen jumped out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag in
hand, and briskly determined to face his fortune.

A fly carried him rapidly to Lady Clavering's house from the station;
and, as he was transported thither, Arthur composed a little speech,
which he intended t