letters — for summing up accounts and jotting down memoranda and dates.

Certain hours of each day David devoted to this labor, collecting his papers in a small room opening off from the law chambers of Mr. Stretton, where for years his uncle had kept a private safe. Conscientiously he toiled at the monotonous task, until weeks, then months, slipped by, hardly noticed, ignoring all social life. When his mother or Laura broached the subject, he would say: “‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ and this must be done first.”

He was not unmindful of his wife during this interval, but wrote frequently, and, to guard against any danger of her being left without resources should something unforeseen befall him, he placed in Bishop Towers’s hands the