pang;
his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded
himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate
himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he
was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the
meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was
that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the
full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a
perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must
go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,--all but
the furniture and pictures,--were the children's and could not be
touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and
cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he
must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could.

After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If
he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed
himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else
of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the
forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself
possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to
be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the
very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it
to have gone with.

Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his
reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a
duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured,
if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means
of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left
providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it
would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope
of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word
again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of
his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane
necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a
sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took
a turn about the room.

He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised
him to find in himself,