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.
Fifteen years of adventure had hardened into wrought metal a character never very ductile.