you any thing! Catch me leaving a sov where he could spy the shine of
it!"

"And don't you count that pitiful, Cornelius? Can you see one of your
own kind, with heart and head and hands like your own, so
self-abandoned, so low, so hopeless, and feel no pity for him? Didn't
you hear him say to himself as he passed you, 'Come, let's get on! I'm
sick of it. I don't know what I'm talking about.' He seemed actually to
despise himself!"

"What better or more just could he do? But never you mind: _he's_
all right! Don't you trouble your head about _him_. You should see
him when he gets home! He'll have his hot supper and his hot tumbler,
don't you fear! Swear he will too, and fluently, if it's not waiting
him!"

"Now that seems to me the most pitiful of all," returned Hester, and was
on the point of adding, "That is just the kind of pity I feel for you,
Corney," but checked herself. "Is it not most pitiful to see a human
being, made in the image of God, sunk so low?" she said.

"It's his own doing," returned Cornelius.

"And is not that yet the lowest and worst of it all? If he could not
help it, and therefore was not to blame, it would be sad enough; but to
be such, and be to blame for being such, seems to me misery upon misery
unbearable."

"There I don't agree with you--not at all! So long as a fellow has fair
play, and nothing happens to him but what he brings upon himself, I