He could not banish the thought, even for a moment. His brother had migrated to the Isle of Wight, and he never saw his wife, except by Wally’s bedside. The boy, too, who had been so strong and sturdy was fast being reduced, under the effect of inertion and confinement, to a thin and sickly-looking child. His hands, that used to be so chubby, had grown white and limp; his abundant hair had been cropped to make him more comfortable, and his temper was fractious and irritable. In fact, he was no longer the little Wally of whom he had been so proud. He was almost as much changed, for the worse, as Henry Hindes himself. Sometimes, as his father sighed the long days away, Hannah’s admonition would recur to his mind: ‘Confess your sins to God, Henry! Tell Him everything! He knows your weakness and will have compassion on it!’ But where should he confess? To whom could he pour out the tale of his sins and his follies? He could not trust a private person, and the parsons of the Protestant church, though they professed to hear the confessions of the dying, who were passing into the very Presence of the great Father-Confessor of us all, and had no need of any more ministrations of man, would not hear a word from the living and the strong, who were still battling with the difficulties of life. He recalled what Mr Bloxam had told him one day, not so long before, of the consolation Catholics found in confession, and how it relieved their souls and consciences to receive absolution from their priests. Hindes wondered how they set about it, whether it was a difficult task, or easily accomplished. In the course of the long walks he frequently took round the City, when his conscience would not let him sit still in the office any longer, he had often come across a little Roman Catholic church, in the East-end of London, where the congregation seemed of a poorer class than the generality. One afternoon he had peeped inside it, and looked, with wonder, at the brass ornaments and artificial flowers on the altar, at the dimly-lighted swinging lamp before the Virgin’s shrine, at the confessional on either side the building, covered in dingy red cloth, with the name of the priest, who occupied it, in white letters over the portal.