his remembrance that
terrible and fatal evening, when, hopeless, friendless, desperate, he
had begged for charity of his uncle's hireling, with all the feelings
that then (so imperfectly and lightly touched on in his brief narrative
to Gawtrey) had raged and blackened in his breast, urging to the
resolution he had adopted, casting him on the ominous friendship of the
man whose guidance he even then had suspected and distrusted. The spot
in either city had a certain similitude and correspondence each with
each: at the first he had consummated his despair of human destinies--he
had dared to forget the Providence of God--he had arrogated his fate to
himself: by the first bridge he had taken his resolve; by the last he
stood in awe at the result--stood no less poor--no less abject--equally
in rags and squalor; but was his crest as haughty and his eye as
fearless, for was his conscience as free and his honour as unstained?
Those arches of stone--those rivers that rolled between, seemed to him
then to take a more mystic and typical sense than belongs to the outer
world--they were the bridges to the Rivers of his Life. Plunged in
thoughts so confused and dim that he could scarcely distinguish,
through the chaos, the one streak of light which, perhaps, heralded
the reconstruction or regeneration of the elements of his soul;--two
passengers halted, also by his side.

"You will be late for the debate," said one of them to the other. "Why
do you stop?"

"My friend," said the other, "I never pass this spot without recalling
the time when I stood here without a son, or, as I thought, a chance of
one, and impiously meditated self-destruction."

"You!--now so rich--so fortunate in repute and station--is it possible?
How was it? A lucky chance?--a sudden legacy?"

"No: Time, Faith, and Energy--the three Friends God has given to the
Poor!"

The men moved on; but Morton, who had turned his face towards them,
fancied that the last speaker fixed on him his bright, cheerful eye,
with a meaning look; and when the man was gone, he repeated those words,
and hailed them in his heart of hearts as an augury from above.

Quickly, then, and as if by magic, the former confusion of his mind
seemed to settle into distinct shapes of courage and resolve. "Yes," he
muttered; "I will keep this night's appointment--I will learn the secret
of these men's life. In my inexperience and destitution, I have suffered
myself to be led hitherto into a partn