He was absolutely ruined, and with his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary and starvation.
Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who was his companion in calamity sobbing in the hall.

A child of a few weeks was in her arms, and two small creatures clung crying to her skirts.
"We've worked hard," she wept; "we have, ma'am.

Father, he's always been steady, an' up early an' late.

P'r'aps it's the Lord's 'and, as you say, ma'am, but we've been decent people an' never missed church when we could 'elp it--father didn't deserve it--that he didn't." She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness.

Rosalie literally quaked with sympathy.