As for John, he had been wandering about stupefied ever since that amazing conclusion had been come to, in such a state of confusion that he could not realise what had happened. Kate was to be his. That was the great matter which had been decided upon. But notwithstanding his passionate love for Kate, this was not what bulked largest in his mind. The world somehow had turned a somersault with him, and he could not make out whether he had lighted on solid earth again, or was still whirling in the dizzy air. His past life had all shrivelled away from him as if it had never been. His sensations were those of a man who has rolled over some tremendous precipice; or who wakes out of a swoon to find himself lying on some battle-field. He was very sore and battered and beaten, tingling all over with bruises; and the relative position of the world, and everything in it, to himself was changed. It might be the same sky and the same soil to others, but to him everything was different. Kate was to be his; but that was in the future. And for the present he was to begin life, not in any noble way for the service of others, but as a clerk in Mr Crediton’s bank. CHAPTER XIV. Mr Crediton’s bank was in the High Street of Camelford--a low-roofed, rather shabby-looking office, with dingy old desks and counters, at which the clerks sat about in corners, all visible to the public, and liable to constant distraction. The windows were never cleaned, on principle, and there were some iron bars across the lower half of them. Mr Crediton’s own room was inside--you had to pass through the office to reach it; and the banker, when he chose to open his door, was visible to the clerks and the public at the end of the dingy vista, just as the clerks, and the public entering at the swing-door, and sometimes the street outside, were to him. The office was a kind of lean-to to the house, which was much loftier, more imposing, and stately; and Mr Crediton’s room communicated with his dwelling by a dark passage. The whole edifice was red brick, and recalled the age of the early Georges, or even of their predecessor Anne--a time when men were not ashamed of their business, but at the same time did it unpretendingly, and had no need during office hours of gilding or plate-glass. The house had a flight of steps up to it almost as high as the top of the office windows, and a big iron horn to extinguish links, and other traces of a moderate antiquity. Up to these steps Kate Crediton’s horse would be led day after day, or her carriage draw up, in very sight of the clerks behind their murky windows. They kept their noses over their desks all day, in order that a butterfly creature, in all the brilliant colours of her kind, might flutter out and in in the sunshine, and take her pleasure. That was perhaps what some of them thought. But, to tell the truth, I don’t believe many of them thought so. Even Mr Whichelo, the head clerk, whose children were often