“My dear Mr. Thurnall,—­My father would have written himself, but he thought, I don’t know why, that I could tell you better than he.  Your father is quite well in health,”—­Thurnall breathes freely again—­“but he has had heavy trials since your poor brother William’s death.”

Tom opens his eyes and sets his teeth more firmly.  “Willy dead?  I suppose there is a letter lost:  better so; better to have the whole list of troubles together, and so get them sooner over.  Poor Will!”

“Your father caught the scarlet fever from him, while he was attending him, and was very ill after he came back.  He is quite well again now; but if I must tell you the truth, the disease has affected his eyes.  You know how weak they always were, and how much worse they have grown of late years; and the doctors are afraid that he has little chance of recovering the sight, at least of the left eye.”

“Recovering?  He’s blind, then.”  And Tom set his teeth more tightly than ever.  He felt a sob rise in his throat, but choked it down, shaking his head like an impatient bull.

“Wait a bit, Tom,” said he to himself, “before you have it out with Dame Fortune.  There’s more behind, I’ll warrant.  News like this lies in pockets, and not in single nuggets.”  And he read on—­

“And—­for it is better you should know all—­something has happened to the railroad in which he had invested so much.  My father has lost money in it also; but not much:  but I fear that your poor dear father is very much straitened.  My father is dreadfully vexed about it, and thinks it all his fault in not having watched the matter more closely, and made your father sell out in time:  and he wants your father to come and live with us:  but he will not hear of it.  So he has given up the old house, and taken one in Water Street, and, oh!  I need not tell you that we are there every day, and that I am trying to make him as happy as I can—­but what can I do?  And then followed kind womanly commonplaces, which Tom hurried over with fierce impatience.

“He wants you to come home; but my father has entreated him to let you stay.  You know, while we are here, he is safe; and my father begs you not to come home, if you are succeeding as well as you have been doing.”

There was much more in the letter, which I need not repeat; and, after all, a short postscript, by Mark himself, followed:—­

“Stay where you are, boy, and keep up heart; while I have a pound, your father shall have half of it; and you know Mark Armsworth.”

He walked away slowly into the forest.  He felt that the crisis of his life was come; that he must turn his hand henceforth to quite new work; and as he went he “took stock,” as it were, of his own soul, to see what point he had attained—­what he could do.