Dennis also rushed from the place, followed by the coarse, jeering
laugh of those who witnessed the scene. In his morbid, suffering state
their voices seemed those of mocking demons.

The night had now fallen. He was too tired and discouraged to look any
further. Wearily he plodded up the street, facing the bitter blast
filled with snow that had begun to fall.

This then was the verdict of the world--"Starve!" This was the only
prospect it offered--that same brave world which had so smilingly
beckoned him on to great achievements and unbounded success but a few
days since--"Starve!" Every blast that swept around the corners howled
in his ears, "Starve!" Every warmly clad person hurrying unheedingly
by seemed to say by his indifference, "Starve! who cares? there is no
place for you, nothing for you to do."

The hard, stern resolution of the past few days, not to yield an inch,
to persist in hewing his way through every difficulty, began to flag.
His very soul seemed crushed within him. Even upon the threshold of
his life, in his strong, joyous youth, the world had become to him
what it literally was that night, a cold, wintry, stormy place, with
a black, lowering sky and hard, frozen earth.

His father's old temptation recurred to him with sudden and great
power. "Perhaps father was right," he mused. "God was against him, and
is also against me, his son. Does He not visit the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation? Not
but that He will save us at last, if we ask Him, but there seems some
great wrong that must be severely punished here. Or else if God does