Zachariah was too weak to say anything more, and fell asleep again. Next day he was better, and he then thought of his wife; he thought of Caillaud, the Major, and Pauline; but he had no power to reflect connectedly. He was in that miserable condition in which objects present themselves in a tumbling crowd, one following the other with inconceivable rapidity, the brain possessing no power to disentangle the chaos. He could not detach the condition of his wife, for example, and determine what ought to be done; he could not even bring himself to decide if it would be best to let her know where he was. No sooner did he try to turn his attention to her, even for a moment, than the Major came before him, and then his other friends, and then the workhouse and the dread of death there. Mercifully he went to sleep again, and after another long night’s rest he was much stronger. He was able now—first sign of restored power—to settle that he ought before everything to communicate with Mrs. Carter, and he inquired of the old man if he could write. “Oh, yes, I can write,” said he, and something like a gleam of light passed over his countenance at being asked to practise an art almost forgotten in those walls. A letter was accordingly written to Mrs. Carter, at her sister’s address, telling her briefly what had happened, but that she was not to be alarmed, as the writer was rapidly recovering. He was able to sign his name; but when the letter was finished, he reflected that he had not got a coin in his pocket with which to pay the postage. One of the institutions of the workhouse was, however, a kind of pawnshop kept by one of the under-masters, as they were called, and Zachariah got a shilling advanced on a pocket-knife. The letter, therefore, was duly despatched, and he gave his secretary a penny for his trouble. This led to a little further intimacy, and Zachariah asked him how he came there. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I was born in the country, and when I was fourteen, my father apprenticed me to the watchmaking. He was well off—my father was—and when I was out of my time he set me up in business in Liverpool. It was a business as had been established some time—a fairish business it was. But when I came to Liverpool I felt dull.” “What do you mean by dull? Stupid?”