cked,
but no one answered. She opened the door, and we found him in his easy
chair before the fire, very white, quite dead.

So I was alone with the Welshwoman till strange people came, and
relations whom I had never seen; and then I heard them saying that I
must be taken away to some more cheerful place. They were kind people,
and I will not believe that they were kind only because I was to be
very rich when I grew to be a man. The world never seemed to be a very
bad place to me, nor all the people to be miserable sinners, even when
I was most melancholy. I do not remember that any one ever did me any
great injustice, nor that I was ever oppressed or ill-treated in any
way, even by the boys at school. I was sad, I suppose, because my
childhood was so gloomy, and, later, because I was unlucky in
everything I undertook, till I finally believed I was pursued by fate,
and I used to dream that the old Welsh nurse and the Woman of the Water
between them had vowed to pursue me to my end. But my natural
disposition should have been cheerful, as I have often thought.

Among the lads of my age I was never last, or even among the last, in
anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I was sure
to sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I pulled an oar
with others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed for a prize, some
unforeseen accident prevented my winning it at the last moment.
Nothing to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the reputation of
being unlucky, until my companions felt it was always safe to bet
against me, no matter what the appearances might be. I became
discouraged and listless in everything. I gave up the idea of
competing for any distinction at the University, comforting myself with
the thought that I could not fail in the examination for the ordinary
degree. The day before the examination began I fell ill; and when at
last I recovered, after a narrow escape from death, I turned my back
upon Oxford, and went down alone to visit the old place where I had
been born, feeble in health and profoundly disgusted and discouraged.
I was twenty-one years of age, master of myself and of my fortune; but
so deeply had the long chain of small unlucky circumstances affected me
that I thought seriously of shutting myself up from the world to live
the life of a hermit and to die as soon as possible. Death seemed the
only cheerful possibility in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt