ir on the chair-bottom, of the jangling of church bells that
now began to make day horrible throughout the confines of the city, of
the hard floor that bruised his knees, of the taste of tears that found
their way into his mouth: for a period of time, the duration of which I
cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, these were
the whole of God's world for John Nicholson.

When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned again to
clearness of consciousness and even a measure of composure, the bells
had but just done ringing, and the Sabbath silence was still marred by
the patter of belated feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by
these more speaking signs, the service had not long begun; and the
unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, might count on
near two hours of only comparative unhappiness. With his father, the
superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking
fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain,
at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an
hour and three-quarters, if the Doctor was long-winded, and then would
begin again that active agony from which, even in the dull ache of the
present, he shrank as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the
family pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the Psalm-books, Maria
with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled and critical;
and at once he was struck with indignation, not unjustly. It was inhuman
to go off to church and leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished,
unforgiven. And at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity
was lessened; yet the paternal terror only grew; and the two strands of
feeling drew him in the same direction.

And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his father should have
locked him in. The notion had no ground in sense; it was probably no
more than a reminiscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his
father's room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the scene
of punishment; but it stuck so rigorously in his mind that he must
instantly approach the door and prove its untruth. As he went, he struck
upon a drawer left open in the business table. It was the money-drawer,
a measure of his father's disarray: the money-drawer--perhaps a pointing
providence! Who is to decide, when even divines differ, between a
providence and a temptation? or who, sitting calmly under his own vi