ruck the mind of Andy Lovell,
and set him to thinking; and the more he thought, the more disturbed
became his mental state. He had, as we have see, no longer any heart
in his business. All that he desired was obtained--enough to live on
comfortably; why, then, should he trouble himself with hard-to-please
and ill-natured customers? This was one side of the question.

The rusty knife suggested the other side. So there was conflict in
his mind; but only a disturbing conflict. Reason acted too feebly on
the side of these new-coming convictions. A desire to be at once,
and to escape daily work and daily troubles, was stronger than any
cold judgement of the case.

"I'll find something to do," he said, within himself, and so pushed
aside unpleasantly intruding thoughts. But Mrs. Lovell did not fail
to observe, that since, her husband's determination to go out of
business, he had become more irritable than before, and less at ease
in every way.

The closing day came at last. Andy Lovell shut the blinds before the
windows of his shop, at night-fall, saying, as he did so, but in a
half-hearted, depressed kind of a way, "For the last time;" and then
going inside, sat down in front of the counter, feeling strangely
and ill at ease. The future looked very blank. There was nothing in
it to strive for, to hope for, to live for. Andy was no philosopher.
He could not reason from any deep knowledge of human nature. His
life had been merely sensational, touching scarcely the confines of
interior thought. Now he felt that he was getting adrift, but could
not understand the why and the wherefore.

As the twilight deepened, his mental obscurity deepened also. He was
still sitting in front of his counter, when a form darkened his open
door. It was the postman, with a letter for Andy's wife. Then he
closed the door, saying in his thought, as he had said when closing
the shutters, "For the last time," and went back into the house with
the letter in his hand. It was sealed with black. Mrs. Lovell looked
frightened as she noticed this sign of death. The contents were soon
known. An only sister, a widow, had died suddenly, and this letter
announced the fact. She left three young children, two girls and a
boy. These, the letter stated, had been dispensed among the late
husband's relatives; and there was a sentence or two expressing a
regret that they should be separated from each other.

Mrs. Lovell was deeply afflicted by this news, and aba