“They would say that it was an honest life, and that they were not a bit ashamed of you.”

Ascott drew himself up a little, and his chest heaved visibly under the close buttoned, thread bare coat.

“Well, at least, it is a life that makes nobody else miserable.”

Ay, that wonderful teacher, Adversity,

        “Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
        Wears yet a precious jewel in its head,”

had left behind this jewel in the young man’s heart.  A disguised, beggared outcast, he had found out the value of an honest name; forsaken, unfriended, he had learned the preciousness of home and love; made a servant of, tyrannized over, and held in low esteem, he had been taught by hard experience the secret of true humility and charity—­the esteeming of others better than himself.

Not with all natures does misfortune so work, but it did with his.  He had sinned; he had paid the cost of his sin in bitter suffering; but the result was cheaply bought, and he already began to feel that it was so.

“Yes,” said he, in answer to a question of Elizabeth’s, “I really am, for some things, happier than I used to be.  I feel more like what I was in the old days, when I was a little chap at Stowbury.  Poor old Stowbury!  I often think of the place in a way that’s perfectly ridiculous.  Still, if any thing happened to me, I should like my aunts to know it, and that I didn’t forget them.”

“But, Sir,” asked Elizabeth earnestly, “do you never mean to go near your aunts again?”

“I can’t say; it all depends upon circumstances.  I suppose,” he added, “if, as is said, one’s sin is sure to find one out, the same rule goes by contraries.  It seems poor Cliffe once spoke of me to a district visitor, the only visitor he ever had; and this gentleman, hearing of the inquest, came yesterday to inquire about him of me; and the end was that he offered me a situation with a person he knew, a very respectable chemist in Tottenham Court Road.”

“And shall you go?”

“To be sure.  I’ve learned to be thankful for small mercies.  Nobody will find me out or recognize me.  You didn’t.  Who knows?  I may even have the honor of dispensing drugs to Uncle Ascott of Russell Square.”

“But,” said Elizabeth, after a pause, “you will not always remain as John Smith, druggist’s shopman, throwing away all your good education, position, and name?”

“Elizabeth,” said he, in a humbled tone, “how dare I ever resume my own name and get back my rightful position while Peter Ascott lives?  Can you or any body point out a way?”

She thought the question over in her clear head; clear still, even at this hour, when she had to think for others, though all personal feeling and interest were buried in that grave over which the sexton was now laying the turf that would soon grow smoothly green.

“If I might advise, Mr. Leaf, I should say, save up all your money, and then go, just as you are, with an honest, bold front, right into my master’s house, with the fifty pounds in your hand—­”