very appropriate--a thin, querulous voice, reminding one of
the community it represented. After lying awake for awhile he would hear
quarters sounding; if they ceased before the fourth he was glad, for
he feared to know what time it was. If the hour was complete, he waited
anxiously for its number. Two, three, even four, were grateful; there
was still a long time before he need rise and face the dreaded task, the
horrible four blank slips of paper that had to be filled ere he might
sleep again. But such restfulness was only for a moment; no sooner had
the workhouse bell become silent than he began to toil in his weary
imagination, or else, incapable of that, to vision fearful hazards of
the future. The soft breathing of Amy at his side, the contact of her
warm limbs, often filled him with intolerable dread. Even now he did not
believe that Amy loved him with the old love, and the suspicion was like
a cold weight at his heart that to retain even her wifely sympathy, her
wedded tenderness, he must achieve the impossible.

The impossible; for he could no longer deceive himself with a hope of
genuine success. If he earned a bare living, that would be the utmost.
And with bare livelihood Amy would not, could not, be content.

If he were to die a natural death it would be well for all. His wife and
the child would be looked after; they could live with Mrs Edmund Yule,
and certainly it would not be long before Amy married again, this time a
man of whose competency to maintain her there would be no doubt. His own
behaviour had been cowardly selfishness. Oh yes, she had loved him, had
been eager to believe in him. But there was always that voice of warning
in his mind; he foresaw--he knew--

And if he killed himself? Not here; no lurid horrors for that poor girl
and her relatives; but somewhere at a distance, under circumstances
which would render the recovery of his body difficult, yet would leave
no doubt of his death. Would that, again, be cowardly? The opposite,
when once it was certain that to live meant poverty and wretchedness.
Amy's grief, however sincere, would be but a short trial compared with
what else might lie before her. The burden of supporting her and Willie
would be a very slight one if she went to live in her mother's house.
He considered the whole matter night after night, until perchance it
happened that sleep had pity upon him for an hour before the time of
rising.

Autumn was passing into winter. Dark