ka riot,
and had made off and never returned. He struck a balance, and found to
his consternation that, unless business took a turn for the better, he
would not be able to hold out beyond the end of the year. Afterwards,
he was blessed if he knew what was going to happen. The ingenious
Hempel was full of ideas for tempting back fortune--opening a branch
store on a new lead was one of them, or removing bodily to Main
Street--but ready money was the SINE QUA NON of such schemes, and ready
money he had not got. Since his marriage he had put by as good as
nothing; and the enlarging and improving of his house, at that time,
had made a big hole in his bachelor savings. He did not feel justified
at the present pass in drawing on them anew. For one thing, before
summer was out there would be, if all went well, another mouth to feed.
And that meant a variety of seen and unforeseen expenses.

Such were the material anxieties he had to encounter in the course of
that winter. Below the surface a subtler embarrassment worked to
destroy his peace. In face of the shortage of money, he was obliged to
thank his stars that he had not lost the miserable lawsuit of a few
months back. Had that happened, he wouldn't at present have known where
to turn. But this amounted to confessing his satisfaction at having
pulled off his case, pulled it off anyhow, by no matter what crooked
means. And as if this were not enough, the last words he had heard
Purdy say came back to sting him anew. The boy had accused him of
judging a fight for freedom from a tradesman's standpoint. Now it might
be said of him that he was viewing justice from the same angle. He had
scorned the idea of distorting his political opinions to fit the trade
by which he gained his bread. But it was a far more serious thing if
his principles, his character, his sense of equity were all to be
undermined as well. If he stayed here, he would end by becoming as
blunt to what was right and fair as the rest of them. As it was, he was
no longer able to regard the two great landmarks of man's moral
development--liberty and justice--from the point of view of an honest
man and a gentleman.

His self-annoyance was so great that it galvanised him to action. There
and then he made up his mind: as soon as the child that was coming to
them was old enough to travel, he would sell out for what he could get,
and go back to the old country. Once upon a time he had hoped, when he
went, to take a good