Waking at eight o’clock—­he knew the time by a bell that clanged in the neighbourhood—­Mr. Tymperley clad himself with nervous haste.  On opening his door, he found lying outside a tray, with the materials of a breakfast reduced to its lowest terms:  half a pint of milk, bread, butter.  At nine o’clock he went downstairs, tapped civilly at the door of the front parlour, and by an untuned voice was bidden enter.  The room was occupied by an oldish man and a girl, addressing themselves to the day’s work of plain bookbinding.

‘Good morning to you, sir,’ said Mr. Tymperley, bending his head.  ’Good morning, Miss Suggs.  Bright!  Sunny!  How it cheers one!’

He stood rubbing his hands, as one might on a morning of sharp frost.  The bookbinder, with a dry nod for greeting, forthwith set Mr. Tymperley a task, to which that gentleman zealously applied himself.  He was learning the elementary processes of the art.  He worked with patience, and some show of natural aptitude, all through the working hours of the day.

To this pass had things come with Mr. Tymperley, a gentleman of Berkshire, once living in comfort and modest dignity on the fruit of sound investments.  Schooled at Harrow, a graduate of Cambridge, he had meditated the choice of a profession until it seemed, on the whole, too late to profess anything at all; and, as there was no need of such exertion, he settled himself to a life of innocent idleness, hard by the country-house of his wealthy and influential friend, Mr. Charman.  Softly the years flowed by.  His thoughts turned once or twice to marriage, but a profound diffidence withheld him from the initial step; in the end, he knew himself born for bachelorhood, and with that estate was content.  Well for him had he seen as clearly the delusiveness of other temptations!  In an evil moment he listened to Mr. Charman, whose familiar talk was of speculation, of companies, of shining percentages.  Not on his own account was Mr. Tymperley lured:  he had enough and to spare; but he thought of his sister, married to an unsuccessful provincial barrister, and of her six children, whom it would be pleasant to help, like the opulent uncle of fiction, at their entering upon the world.  In Mr. Charman he put blind faith, with the result that one morning he found himself shivering on the edge of ruin; the touch of confirmatory news, and over he went.

No one was aware of it but Mr. Charman himself and he, a few days later, lay sick unto death.  Mr. Charman’s own estate suffered inappreciably from what to his friend meant sheer disaster.  And Mr. Tymperley breathed not a word to the widow; spoke not a word to any one at all, except the lawyer, who quietly wound up his affairs, and the sister whose children must needs go without avuncular aid.  During the absence of his friendly neighbours after Mr. Charman’s death, he quietly disappeared.