No such flow of custom came, and various circumstances concurred to lower Mr. Farrer’s spirits, and therefore aggravate his disease. Within the next eight months, nearly a thousand bankruptcies bore testimony to the grievous nature of the burdens under which trade was suffering. Rumours of the approaching downfall of church and state were circulated with sufficient emphasis to shake the nerves of a sick man who had very little notion of a dependence on anything but church and state. Besides this, he did not see that it was now possible for him to be well against New Year’s Eve,—the festival occasion of those whose lives had afforded a subject of mutual money-speculation; and if he could not be well on this anniversary, he was convinced he should be dead. Every time that Henry went, he thought worse of his father’s case, however flattering might be the physician’s reports and assurances. There was no thought of removing him; for the first attempt would have been the death of him. Where he was born and bred, there he must die; and the best kindness was to wrap him in his great-coat, and let him sit behind the counter, ordering, and chatting, and weighing pennyworths, and finding fault with every body, from Mr. Pitt down to Sam the shop-boy. The last morning of the year broke bright and cheery. When Morgan issued from the shop, dressed in her red cloak and round beaver over a mob-cap,—the Welsh costume which she continued to wear,—the copper sun showed himself behind the opposite chimney, and glistened on the candies in the window and the icicles which hung from the outside cornice. Many a cheery sound was in the frosty air,—the laughter of children sliding in the Row, the newsman’s call, the clatter of horses’ feet over the slippery pavement, and the jangle of cans at the stall where hot coffee was sold at the street-corner. All this was strange to the eyes and ears of Morgan, not only from her being unaccustomed to walk abroad, but from its contrast with the scene she had just left. When she had quitted Mr. Farrer’s sick chamber, the red daylight had begun to glimmer through the green stuff window curtain, giving a signal to have done with the yellow candlelight, and to speak some words of cheer to the patient on the coming of a new day. Mr. Farrer had looked dreadfully ill in the flickering gleam of the fire, as he sat in the arm-chair from which his oppressed breathing forbade him to move; but in the daylight he looked absolutely ghastly, and Morgan felt that no time was to be lost in summoning Henry, under pretence of purchasing a gallon of wine.