He might have said with the Preacher: "Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them,--I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour, and this was my portion of all my labour.

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." He had loved,--or rather, he had imagined he loved,--he had married, and his wife had dishonoured him.

Sons had been born to him, who, with their mother's treacherous blood in their veins, had brought him to shame by their conduct,--and now all the kith and kin he had sought to surround himself with were dead, and he was alone--as alone as he had ever been at the very commencement of his career.

Had his long life of toil led him only to this?
With a sense of dull disappointment, his mind reverted to the plan he had half entertained of benefiting Tom o' the Gleam in some way and making him happy by prospering the fortunes of the child he loved so well,--though he was fully aware that perhaps he could not have done much in that direction, as it was more than likely that Tom would have resented the slightest hint of a rich man's patronage.

Death, however, in its fiercest shape, had now put an abrupt end to any such benevolent scheme, whether or not it might have been feasible,--and, absorbed in a kind of lethargic reverie, he again and again asked himself what use he was in the world ?--what could he do with the brief remaining portion of his life ?--and how he could dispose, to his own satisfaction, of the vast wealth which, like a huge golden mill-stone, hung round his neck, dragging him down to the grave?
Such poor people as he had met with during his tramp seemed fairly contented with their lot; he, at any rate, had heard no complaints of poverty from them.