rim pursuer.

They met at last face to face one day on a railroad platform when
neither was expecting to see the other.

In the surprise of the meeting, Carker's foot slipped--he stepped
backward, directly in the path of the engine that was roaring up the
track. It caught him, and tossed him, and tore him limb from limb, and
its iron wheels crushed and ground him to pieces.

And that was the end of Carker, of the white teeth and false smile, and
Mr. Dombey went back to London, still proud and alone, still cold and
forbidding.

But his conscience at last had begun to cry out against him, and to
deafen its voice he plunged more and more recklessly into business,
spending money too lavishly, and taking risks of which, in other days,
he would not have thought.

The months went by and little by little the old firm of Dombey and Son
became more entangled. Soon there were whispers that the business was in
difficulty, but Mr. Dombey did not hear them. One morning the crash
came. A bank closed and then suddenly the word went around that the old
firm had failed.

It was too true. The proud, hard-hearted merchant, who had driven his
daughter from him, was ruined and a beggar. His rich friends, whom he
had treated so haughtily, shrugged their shoulders and sneered. Even
Major Bagstock at his club grew purple in the face with chuckling.

The servants were all sent away, most of the furniture was sold at a
public sale, and the old man, who had once been so proud and held his
gray head so high, still sat on hour after hour in the echoing house,
so empty now that even the rats would not live in it. What was he
thinking?

At last, in his agony, his sorrow, his remorse, his despair, he
remembered Florence. He saw again her trembling lips, her lonely face
longing for love--the terrible hopeless change that came over it when
his own cruel arm struck her on that final day when she had stood before
him.

His pride at last had fallen. He knew now himself what it was to be
rejected and deserted. He thought how the daughter he had disliked, of
them all, had never changed in her love for him. And by his own act he
had lost her for ever. His son, his wife, his fortune, all had gone, and
now at last in his wretchedness he knew that Florence would always have
been true to him if he had only let her.

Days passed, but he never left the house; every night he wandered
through the empty rooms like a ghost. He grew to be a haggard, wasted