rks us no nigher to any distant object,
'cepting always, death. Sir, I cannot, wi' my little learning, tell the
gentleman what will better this; though some working men o' this town
could. But the strong hand will never do't; nor yet lettin' alone will
never do't. Ratin' us as so much power and reg'latin' us as if we was
figures in a sum, will never do't."

"Now, it's clear to me," said Mr. Bounderby, "that you are one of those
chaps who have always got a grievance. And you are such a raspish,
ill-conditioned chap that even your own union--the men who know you
best--will have nothing to do with you. And I tell you what, I go so far
along with them for a novelty, that I'll have nothing to do with you
either. You can finish off what you're at, and then go elsewhere."

Thus James Harthouse learnt how Mr. Bounderby dealt with hands.

Mr. Harthouse, however, only felt bored, and took the earliest
opportunity to explain to Mrs. Bounderby that he really had no opinions,
and that he was going in for her father's opinions, because he might as
well back them as anything else.

"The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds,
and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun and to
give a man the best chance. I am quite ready to go in for it to the same
extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do if I did
believe it?".

"You are a singular politician," said Louisa.

"Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the
state, I assure you, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks and were
reviewed together."

The more Mr. Harthouse's interest waned in politics the greater became
his interest in Mrs. Bounderby. And he cultivated the whelp, cultivated
him earnestly, and by so doing learnt from the graceless youth that "Loo
never cared anything for old Bounderby," and had married him to please
her brother.

Gradually, bit by bit, James Harthouse established a confidence with the
whelp's sister from which her husband was excluded. He established a
confidence with her that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards
her husband, and the absence at all times of any congeniality between
them. He had artfully, but plainly, assured her that he knew her heart
in its last most delicate recesses, and the barrier behind which she
lived had melted away.

And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him.
So drifting icebergs, setting with