genuine nobleness, clearly recognisable by Gilbert.  Ackroyd had brain-power above the average, and it was his right to strive for a better lot than the candle-factory could assure him.  So Grail listened with a smile of much indulgence to the young fellow’s fuming against the order of things, and if he now and then put in a critical remark was not sorry to have it scornfully swept aside with a flood of vehement words.  He felt, perchance, that a share of such vigour might have made his own existence more fruitful.

This was Gilbert Grail at the time with which we are now concerned.  His mother believed that she had discovered in him something of a new mood of late, a tendency to quiet cheerfulness, and she attributed it in part to the healthfulness of intercourse with a friend; partly she assigned to it another reason.  But her assumption did not receive much proof from Gilbert’s demeanour when left alone in the sitting-room this Sunday night.  Since Thyrza’s departure, he had in truth only made pretence of reading, and now that his mother was gone, he let the book fall from his hands.  His countenance was fixed in a supreme sadness, his lips were tightly closed, and at times moved, as if in the suppression of pain.  Hopelessness in youth, unless it be justified by some direst ruin of the future, is wont to touch us either with impatience or with a comforting sense that reaction is at hand; in a man of middle age it moves us with pure pathos.  The sight of Gilbert as he sat thus motionless would have brought tears to kindly eyes.  The past was a burden on his memory, the future lay before him like a long road over which he must wearily toil—­the goal, frustration.  To-night he could not forget himself in the thoughts of other men.  It was one of the dread hours, which at intervals came upon him, when the veil was lifted from the face of destiny, and he was bidden gaze himself into despair.  At such times he would gladly have changed beings with the idlest and emptiest of his fellow-workmen; their life might be ignoble, but it had abundance of enjoyment.  To him there came no joy, nor ever would.  Only when he lay in his last sleep would it truly be said of him that he rested.

At twelve o’clock he rose; he had no longing for sleep, but in five hours the new week would have begun, and he must face it with what bodily strength he might.  Before entering his bedroom, which was next to the parlour, he went to the house-door and opened it quietly.  A soft rain was falling.  Leaving the door ajar, he stepped out into the street and looked up to the top windows.  There was no light behind the blinds.  As if satisfied, he went hack into the house and to his room.

The factory was at so short a distance from Walnut Tree Walk that Gilbert was able to come home for breakfast and dinner.  When he entered at mid-day on Monday, his mother pointed to a letter on the mantel-piece.  He examined the address, and was at a loss to recognise the writing.