As to the fact of my brother assuming towards me the bearing of a proud, harsh master, the fault is his, not mine; and shall his injustice, his bad feeling, turn me at once aside from the path I have chosen?
No; at least, ere I deviate, I will advance far enough to see whither my career tends.

As yet I am only pressing in at the entrance--a strait gate enough; it ought to have a good terminus." While I thus reasoned, Mr.Crimsworth rang a bell; his first clerk, the individual dismissed previously to our conference, re-entered.
"Mr.Steighton," said he, "show Mr.William the letters from Voss, Brothers, and give him English copies of the answers; he will translate them." Mr.Steighton, a man of about thirty-five, with a face at once sly and heavy, hastened to execute this order; he laid the letters on the desk, and I was soon seated at it, and engaged in rendering the English answers into German.

A sentiment of keen pleasure accompanied this first effort to earn my own living--a sentiment neither poisoned nor weakened by the presence of the taskmaster, who stood and watched me for some time as I wrote.

I thought he was trying to read my character, but I felt as secure against his scrutiny as if I had had on a casque with the visor down-or rather I showed him my countenance with the confidence that one would show an unlearned man a letter written in Greek; he might see lines, and trace characters, but he could make nothing of them; my nature was not his nature, and its signs were to him like the words of an unknown tongue.

Ere long he turned away abruptly, as if baffled, and left the counting-house; he returned to it but twice in the course of that day; each time he mixed and swallowed a glass of brandy-and-water, the materials for making which he extracted from a cupboard on one side of the fireplace; having glanced at my translations--he could read both French and German--he went out again in silence..