It seemed that in the course of that eventful day an infrequent purchaser had made his appearance in the shop. And when he had come to examine the musty old tomes upon the shelves, had discovered one among them for which he had paid the fabulous sum of three hundred pounds. Therefore the little room was now doubly secure. Yet both these occurrences left the young man untouched by gratitude. Even that which made his father’s eyes so radiant could not release his mind from the thrall of an indescribable torment which made it bleed. Better a thousand times to have lain in the streets of the great city, better a thousand times that his father and himself had been trampled lifeless by the relentless hordes of street-persons, than that he should have hardened his heart for the consummation of such a miracle as that. As he paced the darkness that night in the throes of newer, and more sinister, and totally undreamt-of torments which his ill-starred attempt at action had imposed upon him, he could discern only one course to pursue. He must derive the power to make restitution. Still, the mere act of restitution could not efface the deed. In whatever form he made amendment, there was still the foul stain that nothing could expunge. However, on the following morning, as he entered the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, the determination was strong within him to make all the reparation that lay in his power. As he crossed the threshold of the outer office he was surprised to see the undersized figure of James Dodson ascending the staircase, although the time was a full hour before his usual appearance at the office. His mentor looked back over his shoulder. “Morning, Luney,” he said in a rather forlorn manner, and passed on his way up the stairs. William Jordan, in his bewilderment, in his strange self-amaze, in his dim uncertainty of the course of action he must now pursue, passed half-an-hour in the counting-house below. In that time he not only indulged in desperate, terrified self-intercourse, but, further, he sought the resolution to walk up-stairs, to enter the room of his confiding master, and to restore that which he had stolen. The conviction was being slowly evolved in his heart that some ampler form of reparation was demanded of him, yet the precise shape it must assume was not as yet vouchsafed to him. At last, spurred by the knowledge that if he let the hour of action pass it could never return, he slowly ascended the stairs. Stealthily he crept up them, hardly knowing why he walked so softly. As he came noiselessly to his master’s door, and proceeded to open it, it suddenly gave a loud creak. It was as if it sought to rebuke his unworthy fear that it should do so. Before the young man could enter the room his friend and mentor had come out of the room adjoining, and was standing at his side. “Come in here,” he said forlornly. “I was expecting you would give yourself away.”