And yet his heart was soft to the cause of it all. A feeling which had never been awakened in him, even when she was most kind, by his mother, which seemed out of the question so far as she was concerned, stole in with a softening influence indescribable, along with the image of that disgraced and degraded man, insensible as he seemed to his own disgrace. That easy smile of cheerful vagabondage was the only thing that threw a little light upon the unbroken gloom. It had amused John in the vagrant soul which he had taken under his wing; it was awful and intolerable to him in his father: yet unconsciously it shed a sort of faint light upon the future, from which all guidance seemed removed. What was he to do in that changed and terrible future, that new world in which there was no longer any one of all the hopes that had cheered him? Elly was gone, as far as the poles apart from him and his ways, and so were his ambitions, his schemes. There remained to him in all the world nothing but his mother and sister, who had deceived him, and whom he could now serve best by going away out of their ken for ever: and this poor criminal, abandoned by all--the convict who had no friend but Joe, who had wronged and cheated John, and brought him to the dust, but who yet was the only living creature that belonged to him and had need of him now. He was roused from his first languor of despair (though that was a condition which could not have lasted long in any circumstances) by the entrance of the little maid to lay the table for another meal. Another meal! Was this henceforward to be the only way in which his days should be measured? But no, he said to himself, jumping up with a sort of fury from his sofa, that could not be, for there would soon be nothing to get the meals with in that case: at which thought he laughed to himself. Laughing or crying what did it matter, the one was as horrible as the other. ‘Missis said as she thought perhaps you would be wishing your dinner at ’ome to-day,’ said the maid, startled by his laugh. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said John; but, when the food came with its savoury smell, he found out, poor fellow, that he was hungry, very hungry, having eaten nothing for--he did not recollect how long, weeks it seemed to him, since that peaceful breakfast before anything had gone wrong. At twenty-one a young man’s appetite cannot be quenched by anything that may happen. He ate, he felt enormously, eagerly, and afterwards he was a little better. When that was over he drew himself together, and his thoughts began to shape themselves into a more definite form.