and cursed him; laid the blame of everything that went wrong in house,
stable, or field upon his shoulders; railed at him, and used him, as
people said, worse than a dog.

Why did Feltram endure this contumelious life? What could he do but
endure it? was the answer. What was the power that induced strong
soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to
be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with
an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of
an unconscious calculation of chances which satisfies them that it is
ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the
alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with
each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one
knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what
they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but
quite irresistible power.

A man of spirit would rather break stones on the highway than eat that
bitter bread, was the burden of every man's song on Feltram's bondage.
But he was not so sure that even the stone-breaker's employment was open
to him, or that he could break stones well enough to retain it on a fair
trial. And he had other ideas of providing for himself, and a different
alternative in his mind.

Good-natured Mrs. Julaper, the old housekeeper at Mardykes Hall, was
kind to Feltram, as to all others who lay in her way and were in
affliction.

She was one of those good women whom Nature provides to receive the
burden of other people's secrets, as the reeds did long ago, only that