elf and Doyce. The latter agreed readily, and
the new firm was established. Soon after this Doyce went abroad on
business, leaving Arthur to manage the affairs.

All might have gone well but for the fame of Mr. Merdle. His wealth
seemed so enormous, and his plans so sure, that many people throughout
England, just as old Mr. Dorrit had done, put their money in his care.
Even Pancks, the rent collector, did so, and strongly advised Arthur to
do the same. Convinced by such advice Arthur was unhappily led to invest
the money of the new firm in Merdle's schemes.

One day soon after, Mr. Merdle, whom every one had looked up to and
respected, killed himself, and then to every one's astonishment it was
found that his money was all gone, that his schemes were all exploded,
and that the famous man who had dined and wined with the great was
simply the greatest forger and the greatest thief that had ever cheated
the gallows.

But it was too late then. Arthur's firm was utterly ruined with all the
rest. What hurt him most was the knowledge that by using the firm's
money he had ruined his honest partner, Doyce.

In order to set the latter as near right as he could, Arthur turned over
every cent of his own personal fortune to pay as much of the firm's debt
as it would, keeping nothing of value but his clothes and his books.
Beside doing this, he wrote out a statement, declaring that he, Arthur
Clennam, had of his own act and against his partner's express caution,
used the firm's money for this purpose, and that he alone, and not
Doyce, was to blame. He declared also that his own share (if any
remained out of the wreck) should go to his partner, and that he himself
would work as a mere clerk, at as small a salary as he could live on.

He published this statement at once, unwisely no doubt, when all London
was so enraged against Merdle and glad to have some one on whom to vent
its madness. In the public anger and excitement the generosity of his
act was lost sight of. A few hours later a man who had invested some of
his money in Arthur's firm, and thus lost it, had him arrested for debt,
and that night he entered the dismal iron gates of the Marshalsea
prison, not now as a visitor, but as one whom the pitiless bars locked
in from liberty.

The turnkey took him up the old familiar staircase and into the old
familiar room in which he had so often been. And as he sat down in its
loneliness, thinking of the fair, slight form that had