an amicable lawsuit.  The amicable lawsuit carried on.  His own lawyer seemed to throw him over.  Mr Gazebee was successful in everything.  No money came to him.  Money was demanded from him on old scores and on new scores—­and all that he received to console him for what he had lost was a mourning ring with his wife’s hair—­for which, with sundry other mourning rings, he had to pay—­and an introduction to Mr Dobbs Broughton.  To Mr Dobbs Broughton he owed five hundred pounds; and as regarded a bill for the one-half of that sum which was due tomorrow, Mr Dobbs Broughton had refused to grant him renewal for a single month!

I know no more uncomfortable walking than that which falls to the lot of men who go into the City to look for money, and who find none.  Of all the lost steps trodden by men, surely the steps lost after that fashion are the most melancholy.  It is not only that they are so vain, but that they are accompanied by so killing a sense of shame!  To wait about in dingy rooms, which look on to bare walls, and are approached through some Hook Court; or to keep appointments at a low coffee-house, to which trystings the money-lender will not trouble himself to come unless it pleases him; to be civil, almost suppliant, to a cunning knave whom the borrower loathes; to be refused thrice, and then cheated with his eyes open on the fourth attempt; to submit himself to vulgarity of the foulest kind, and to have to seem to like it; to be badgered, reviled, and at last accused of want of honesty by the most fraudulent of mankind; and at the same time to be clearly conscious of the ruin that is coming—­this is the fate of him who goes into the City to find money, not knowing where it is to be found!

Crosbie went along the lane into Lombard Street, and then he stood still for a moment to think.  Though he knew a good deal of affairs in general, he did not quite know what would happen to him of his bill should be dishonoured.  That somebody would bring it to him noted, and require him instantly to put his hand into his pocket and bring out the amount of the bill, plus the amount of certain expenses, he thought that he did know.  And he knew that were he in trade he would become a bankrupt; and he was well aware that such an occurrence would prove him to be insolvent.  But he did not know what his creditors would immediately have the power of doing.  That the fact of the bill having been dishonoured would reach the Board under which he served—­and, therefore, also the fact that he had had recourse to such bill transactions—­this alone was enough to fill him with dismay.  In early life he had carried his head so high, he had been so much more than a mere Government clerk, that the idea of the coming disgrace almost killed him.  Would it not be well that he should put an end to himself, and thus escape?  What was there in the world now for which it was worth his while to live?  Lily, whom he had once gained, and by that gain had