“Now you must go out trout-fishing with Billy.  He will take you on the hills, where the air is pure, and favorable to invention.  You will divert your mind from all external subjects, especially Billy, who is a fool, and his trout-killing inhumane, and I a merciless glutton for eating them; and you will think, and think, and think, and forge the required key to this lock with three wards—­Life, Labor, Capital.  And, when forged, the Philanthropic Society shall pay you a good price for it.  Meantime, don’t dream of leaving Hillsborough, or I shall give you a stirrup-cup that will waft you much further than London; for it shall be ‘of prussic acid all composed,’ or ‘juice of cursed Hebenon in a vial.’  Come, away with you.”

“Good-by, doctor.  God bless you.  You have found ‘the key to my heart’ somehow.  I come to you a miserable broken-hearted dog, and you put life and hope into me directly.  I declare talking with you it’s like drinking sunshine.  I’ll try all I know to please you.”

He went down the street with his old elastic tread, and muttered to himself, “There’s no lock without a key.”

Next day he went out on the hills with Billy, and saw him tickle trout, and catch them under stones, and do many strange things, and all the time he thought of Grace Carden, and bemoaned his sad fate.  He could not command his mind, and direct it to philanthropy.  His heart would not let him, and his personal wrongs were too recent.  After a short struggle, these got so thoroughly the better, that he found himself stealing the doctor’s words for his own purposes.  “No lock without a key.”  Then there must be some way of outwitting these cursed Trades, and so making money enough to set up as a master, and then court her, and woo her, and marry her.  Heaven seemed to open on him at this prospect, and he fell into a deep reverie.  By-and-by, as he pondered, it seemed to him as if the shadow of a coming idea was projected in advance of the idea itself.  He knew somehow there was a way to baffle his enemies, and resume his business, and yet he could not see the way; but still he was absolutely conscious it existed.

This conviction took such hold of him, that he became restless, and asked Billy to leave off and come away.  The youth consented, and they returned to the town with a basket of trout.  Henry sent Billy on to the doctor with half of them, and took the other half to his friend Bayne.

On what a trifle things turn.  Bayne was very much pleased with his little attention, and asked him to take them to his lodging, and beg the landlady to cook them for dinner.  “Tell her you dine with me, old fellow.”

“Oh, hang it, I wasn’t fishing for a dinner.”

“As if I didn’t know that.  But you must.  Then I shall enjoy your company in peace.  I shall be there in an hour.”

And so he was:  but in that one hour events had occurred that I shall leave Mr. Bayne to relate.