Body and mind are alike worn out, and his brain seems filled with uniform dull mist.
A shop-door opens in front of him; a boy comes out.

He sees bottles inside, and shelves, the look of which he knows too well.
The bottle-boy, whistling, begins to take the shutters down.

How often, in Whitbury of old, had Elsley done the same! Half amused, he watched the lad, and wondered how he spent his evenings, and what works he read, and whether he ever thought of writing poetry.
And as he watched, all his past life rose up before him, ever since he served out medicines fifteen years ago;--his wild aspirations, heavy labours, struggles, plans, brief triumphs, long disappointments: and here was what it had all come to,--a failure,--a miserable, shameful failure! Not that he thought of it with repentance, with a single wish that he had done otherwise: but only with disappointed rage.

"Yes!" he said bitterly to himself-- "'We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But after come despondency and madness.' This is the way of the world with all who have nobler feelings in them than will fit into its cold rules.

Curse the world! what on earth had I to do with mixing myself up in it, and marrying a fine lady?
Fool that I was! I might have known from the first that she could not understand me; that she would go back to her own! Let her go! I will forget her, and the world, and everything--and I know how!" And springing up, he walked across to the druggist's shop.
Years before, Elsley had tried opium, and found, unhappily for him, that it fed his fancy without inflicting those tortures of indigestion which keep many, happily for them, from its magic snare.