What a fool he was, to fancy such nonsense! Here he had been slaving all his life to keep his father: and now he could keep him; why, he would be justified, right, a good son, in doing the thing.

How hard, how unjust of those upper Powers in which he believed so vaguely, to forbid his doing it! And how did he know that they forbid him?
That is too deep a question to be analysed here: but this thing is noteworthy, that there came next over Tom's mind a stranger feeling still--a fancy that if he did this thing, and sold his soul, he could not answer for himself thenceforth on the score of merest respectability; could not answer for himself not to drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly riot thenceforth.

He felt as if he should cast away his last anchor, and drift helplessly down into utter shame and ruin.

It may have been very fanciful: but so he felt; and felt it so strongly too, that in less time than I have taken to write this he had turned to Mark Armsworth:-- "Sir, you are what I have always found you.

Do you wish me to be what you have always found me ?" "I'd be sorry to see you anything else, boy." "Then, sir, I can't do this.