‘Yes, Jacob Wincher, my old Jack-of-all-trades; you haven’t seen him yet? He burrows somewhere in the back premises—sleeps in the coal-cellar, I believe—and is about as fond of daylight and fresh air as a mole. A faithful fellow enough. He was my clerk and general assistant in Bond-street; here he amuses himself pottering about among my purchases; catalogues them after his own fashion, and could give a better statement of my affairs than any City accountant.’ ‘A valuable servant,’ said Lucius. ‘Do you think so? I haven’t paid him anything for the last seven years. He stays with me, partly because he likes me in his slavish canine way, partly because he has nowhere else to go. His wife keeps my house, and takes care of Lucille. And now for our consultation; the pain in my side has been a trifle worse this morning.’ Lucius began his interrogatory. Gently, and with that friendly persuasiveness which had made him beloved by his parish patients, he drew from the old man a full confession of his symptoms. The case was grave. An existence joyless, hard, laborious, monotonous to weariness, will sometimes exhaust the forces of the body, sap the vital power, as perniciously as the wear and tear of riotous living. High pressure has pretty much the same effect, let the motive power be love of gain or love of pleasure. In a word, Homer Sivewright had worn himself out. There was chronic disease of long standing; there was general derangement which might end fatally sooner or later. He was over sixty years of age. He might die within the year; he might live two, three, four, five years longer. ‘You have not spared yourself, I fear,’ said Lucius, as he put his stethoscope into his pocket. ‘No; I have always had one great object in life. A man who has that rarely spares himself.’ ‘Yet a man who wears himself out before his time by reckless labour is hardly wiser than those foolish virgins who left their lamps without oil.’ ‘Perhaps. It is not always easy to be wise. A man whose domestic life is a disappointment is apt to concentrate his labour and his thoughts upon some object outside his home. My youth was a hard one from necessity, my middle age was hard from habit. I had not acquired the habit of luxury. My trade grew daily more interesting to me, ten times more so than anything the world calls pleasure. I spent my days in sale-rooms, or wandering in those strange nooks and corners to which art treasures sometimes drift—the mere jetsam and flotsam of life’s troubled sea, the unconsidered spoil of ruined homes. My nights were devoted to the study of my ledger, or the text-books of my trade. I had no desire for any other form of life. If I could have afforded all the comforts and pleasures of modern civilisation—which of course I could not—my choice would have kept me exactly where I was.’