The upward struggle of men, who have fallen from a high place once gained, that second mounting of the ladder of life, seldom is an easy path.

He, and with him Gertrude and his children, had been called on to pay the full price of his backsliding.

His history had gone with him to the Antipodes; and, though the knowledge of what he had done was not there so absolute a clog upon his efforts, so overpowering a burden, as it would have been in London, still it was a burden and a heavy one.
It had been well for Gertrude that she had prepared herself to give up all her luxuries by her six months' residence in that Millbank Paradise of luxuries: for some time she had little enough in the 'good and happy land,' to which she had taught herself and her children to look forward.

That land of promise had not flowed with milk and honey when first she put her foot upon its soil; its produce for her had been gall and bitter herbs for many a weary month after she first landed.

But her heart had never sunk within her.