to
obliterate the traces of his rude origin. Born in a London alley, the
son of a labourer burdened with a large family, he had made his way by
sheer force of character to a position which would have seemed proud
success but for the difficulty with which he kept himself alive. His
parents were dead. Of his brothers, two had disappeared in the abyss,
and one, Andrew, earned a hard livelihood as a journeyman baker; the
elder of his sisters had married poorly, and the younger was his blind
pensioner. Nicholas had found a wife of better birth than his own, a
young woman with country kindred in decent circumstances, though she
herself served as nursemaid in the house of the medical man who
employed her future husband. He had taught himself the English
language, so far as grammar went, but could not cast off the London
accent; Mrs. Peak was fortunate enough to speak with nothing worse than
the note of the Midlands.

His bent led him to the study of history, politics, economics, and in
that time of military outbreak he was frenzied by the conflict of his
ideals with the state of things about him. A book frequently in his
hands was Godwin's _Political Justice_, and when a son had been born to
him he decided to name the child after that favourite author. In this
way, at all events, he could find some expression for his hot defiance
of iniquity.

He paid his income-tax, and felt a savage joy in the privation thus
imposed upon his family. Mrs. Peak could not forgive her husband, and
in this case, though she had but dim appreciation of the point of
honour involved, her censures doubtless fell on Nicholas's vulnerable
spot; it was the perversity of arrogance, at least as much as honesty,
that impelled him to incur taxation. His wife's perseverance in
complaint drove him to stern impatience, and for a long time the peace
of the household suffered.

When the boy Godwin was five years old, the death of his blind aunt
came as a relief to means which were in every sense overtaxed. Twelve
months later, a piece of unprecedented good fortune seemed to place the
Peaks beyond fear of want, and at the same time to supply Nicholas with
a fulfilment of hopeless desires. By the death of Mrs Peak's brother,
they came into possession of a freehold house and about nine hundred
pounds. The property was situated some twelve miles from the Midland
town of Twybridge, and thither they at once removed. At Twybridge lived
Mrs. Peak's elder sister, Miss