He had methodized his life by this time, devoting a certain portion of his days to his cousin’s interests, but in no wise neglecting the work he had to do for his own advancement. He had known too many instances of men who had made reading law an excuse for an idle and desultory life, and he was resolved that his own course should be steady and persistent even to doggedness. He had been told that success at the Bar was nowadays almost unattainable; that the men of the day who had conquered fame and were making great fortunes, were in a manner miraculous men, and that it was futile for any young man to hope to follow in their steps. The road _they_ had trodden was barred against the new comer. Theodore listened to these pessimists, yet was not discouraged. He had told himself that he would emerge somehow from the obscurity of a country solicitor’s practice—would bring himself in some wise nearer the social level of the woman he loved, so that if in the days to come one gleam of hope should ever shine upon that love he might be able to say to her, “My place in life is the place your father held when he offered himself to your mother; my determination to conquer fortune is not less than his.” He seldom passed the dingy door of the ground-floor chambers—on which the several names of three briefless ones were painted in dirty letters that had once been white—without thinking of his fortunate kinsman, without wondering what his life had been like in those darksome rooms, and in what shape fortune had first appeared to him. He had not married until he was forty. Long and lonely years had gone before that golden summertide of his life, when a young and lovely woman had given him happiness and fortune. How had he lived in those lonely years? Tradition accused him of miserly habits, of shabby raiment, of patient grinding and scraping to accumulate wealth. Theodore knew that if he had hoarded his earnings it had been for a worthy end. He had set himself to win a place among the lords of the soil. The land he loved had been to him as a mistress, and for that he had been content to live poorly and spend his nights in toil. For such miserliness Theodore had nothing but admiration; for he had seen how liberally the man who had scraped and hoarded was able to administer a large income—how generous as a master, friend, and patron the sometime miser had shown himself.