He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a small share in the business,--what would be the end of this most improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him to something better. Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he sincerely respected--I might almost say he admired--his own folly. He had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not understood.