The rusty knife suggested the other side.  So there was conflict in his mind; but only a disturbing conflict.  Reason acted too feebly on the side of these new-coming convictions.  A desire to be at once, and to escape daily work and daily troubles, was stronger than any cold judgement of the case.

“I’ll find something to do,” he said, within himself, and so pushed aside unpleasantly intruding thoughts.  But Mrs. Lovell did not fail to observe, that since, her husband’s determination to go out of business, he had become more irritable than before, and less at ease in every way.

The closing day came at last.  Andy Lovell shut the blinds before the windows of his shop, at night-fall, saying, as he did so, but in a half-hearted, depressed kind of a way, “For the last time;” and then going inside, sat down in front of the counter, feeling strangely and ill at ease.  The future looked very blank.  There was nothing in it to strive for, to hope for, to live for.  Andy was no philosopher.  He could not reason from any deep knowledge of human nature.  His life had been merely sensational, touching scarcely the confines of interior thought.  Now he felt that he was getting adrift, but could not understand the why and the wherefore.

As the twilight deepened, his mental obscurity deepened also.  He was still sitting in front of his counter, when a form darkened his open door.  It was the postman, with a letter for Andy’s wife.  Then he closed the door, saying in his thought, as he had said when closing the shutters, “For the last time,” and went back into the house with the letter in his hand.  It was sealed with black.  Mrs. Lovell looked frightened as she noticed this sign of death.  The contents were soon known.  An only sister, a widow, had died suddenly, and this letter announced the fact.  She left three young children, two girls and a boy.  These, the letter stated, had been dispensed among the late husband’s relatives; and there was a sentence or two expressing a regret that they should be separated from each other.

Mrs. Lovell was deeply afflicted by this news, and abandoned herself, for a while, to excessive grief.  Her husband had no consolation to offer, and so remained, for the evening, silent and thoughtful.  Andy Lovell did not sleep well that night.  Certain things were suggested to his mind, and dwelt upon, in spite of many efforts to thrust them aside.  Mrs. Lovell was wakeful also, as was evident to her husband from her occasional sighs, sobs, and restless movements; but no words passed between them.  Both rose earlier than usual.

Had Andy Lovell forgotten that he opened his shop door, and put back the shutters, as usual?  Was this mere habit-work, to be corrected when he bethought himself of what he had done?  Judging from his sober face and deliberate manner—­no.  His air was not that of a man acting unconsciously.

Absorbed in her grief, and troubled with thoughts of her sister’s oprhaned children, Mrs. Lovell did not, at first, regard the opening of her husband’s shop as anything unusual.  But, the truth flashing across her mind, she went in where Lovell stood at his old place by the cutting-board, on which was laid a side of morocco, and said,—­