ch special testimony of approval when
under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a
Ball. All the same, Mr Butterwell began to think that there was
something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie
had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been
staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr Butterwell,
in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for
his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the de Courcys! Mr
Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends.

"Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll
come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what
papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and
they won't break your back."

Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's
room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's
eye.

He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried
to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs
behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life;
but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself
to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault,
or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his
grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of
his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house.
But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a
man's own folly and sin;--especially not if it has come from his own
selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive
them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and
reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he
avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and
so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he
came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from
his promotion.

But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I
must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a
pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there
was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden
must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was
two o'clock, neglecting Mr Butterwell and his office papers, and
not stirring from his