When at last the time arrived so eagerly waited for, and I had about £400 saved, I took a day's leave from the office (I was soon to leave it altogether), and going to the Court hunted up my old and tried friend, Mr Hardhat. Giving him a substantial fee for taking him away from the Court, we adjourned to a neighbouring hotel, where I unfolded my plan to him. He listened attentively until I had finished, and then said judicially, "Yes, it's all very well and honest and all the rest of it, but if you will excuse my saying so it's very foolish. In the first place every one of your creditors has wiped your account off his books as a bad debt, and you'll hardly get thanks for re-opening the matter, even though you come with the money in your hand. In the next you'll certainly get into trouble with the Court for not proceeding in the matter regularly, and you may be sure they will suspend your discharge for as long as they possibly can. The four years which has elapsed your bankruptcy will not be reckoned. What you ought to do is to take half the sum you have mentioned, go to the Official Receiver, and tell him that a friend has offered to pay that sum into Court in consideration of you getting your immediate discharge, and all will go through like clock-work." I waited very impatiently until he had finished, because I knew beforehand all the facts he was telling me, and then I said grimly, "And how much of that £200 do you suppose my creditors will get by the time it has filtered through the Court?" He smiled and murmured abstractedly, "I'd rather not say." "Well," I went on, "my mind is made up. Every penny that I have saved up to pay my debts with shall go to the people I owe the money to, and I'll do the distribution most gladly. I paid £10 in Court fees almost with my heart's blood, and they'll get no more if I can help it." I had forgotten to mention that being unable to redeem the beautiful piano in time it was lost, and the pawnbroker got for £8 an instrument honestly worth £40. So we parted the best of friends, and I with my cheque-book in my pocket began my happy journey. I wish with all my heart that I was able to give you some idea of the joy I had that day and the next. As nothing had ever given me greater pain, shame and humiliation, than having to make excuses for not paying money which I legally owed, as the degradation of borrowing had eaten into my very soul, so now the exultation of being able to clear myself, as it were, was correspondingly great. I verily believe that was the happiest (consciously the happiest) day of all my life. And I was asked to surrender all that delight to some cold-blooded official, who would exact an enormous toll for the services rendered by his department. The very thought of such a thing was preposterous. It would have been literally flinging away the joy which I had anticipated so long and so eagerly.