It was not until he found himself sitting in his own room, staring blankly at the opposite wall, that the solicitor realised the full weight of his misfortune. He had no feeling of anger; the blow, though he had all along had a lurking presentiment of it, was too cruel and staggering, now that it had fallen, to arouse any such emotion. He was bitterly disappointed. A thousand pounds! But a few months ago, a thousand pounds would have seemed a fortune, and the windfall would have set him planning innumerable ways of turning it to the best advantage. But what was it now to him, who had been deprived of the expectation of a sum which would have rendered all planning unnecessary, only to be resorted to as a recreation, for the remainder of his life? Nothing, and worse than nothing—a mere tantalising taste of the good fortune which ought in justice—so it really appeared to him—to have been his. And must he now give up all his hopes? Must he remain for ever a mere plodding man of business of doubtful reputation—even with a thousand pounds of capital? Were the delights of unlimited leisure, of freedom from thought for the morrow, of unstinted gratification of animal appetites, of worldly consideration, never to be his, after all? He was fast approaching middle life; the time remaining to him for the enjoyment of all these things was growing shorter and shorter. To the purer pleasures of honest labour, to the noble ambition of building up a modest fortune by dauntless perseverance and undeviating rectitude, in the hope that some day, with folded hands, he might fearlessly await the end in the quiet of an old age free from reproach—to all this he was utterly a stranger; nor would the prospect, had it been suggested, have at all allured him. His life had been one of poverty tempered by knaveries too petty to attract punishment; his dream of success had been one of sudden and unearned wealth, coming without effort, to be applied only to selfish gratification. To such men, crime, as crime, presents nothing repulsive; they abstain from it only so long as it offers no advantage commensurate with the risk. Given advantage and opportunity, crime follows with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration. He would not give way without a struggle. He could not. Something must be done. But what?