And yet the probabilities were that if some kind, just man had bestowed upon Haldane both employment and trust, with a chance to rise, his bitter lesson would have made him scrupulously careful to shun his peculiar temptations from that time forward. But the world usually regards one who has committed a crime as a criminal, and treats him as such. It cannot, if it would, nicely calculate the hidden moral state and future chances. It acts on sound generalities, regardless of the exceptions; and thus it often happens that men and women who at first can scarcely understand the world's adverse opinion, are disheartened by it, and at last come to merit the worst that can be said or thought. As, at the time of his first arrest, Haldane had found his eyes drawn by a strange, cruel fascination to every scornful or curious face upon the street, so now he began to feel a morbid desire to know just what people were saying and thinking of him. He purchased both that day's papers and those of the previous day, and, finding a little out-of-the-way restaurant kept by a foreigner, he "supped full with"--what were to him emphatically--"horrors"; the dinner and supper combined, which he had ordered, growing cold, in the meantime, and as uninviting as the place in which it was served. His eyes dwelt longest upon those sentences which were the most unmercifully severe, and they seemed to burn their way into his very soul. Was he in truth such a miscreant as the "Courier" described? Mrs. Arnot had not shrunk from him as from contamination; but she was different from all other people that he had known; and he now remembered, also, that even she always referred to his act in a grave, troubled way, as if both its character and consequences were serious indeed. There was such a cold, leaden despondency burdening his heart that he felt that he must have relief of some kind. Although remembering his rash invocation of fatal consequences to himself should he touch again that which had brought him so much evil, he now, with a reckless oath, muttered that he "needed some liquor, and would have it." Having finished a repast from which he would have turned in disgust before his fortunes had so greatly altered, and having gained a little temporary courage from the more than doubtful brandy served in such a place, he obtained permission to sit by the fire and smoke away the blustering evening, for he felt no disposition to face the world again that day. The German proprietor and his beer-drinking patrons paid no attention to the stranger, and as he sat off on one side by himself at a table, with a mug of lager before him, he was practically as much alone, and as lonely, as if in a desert.