'I have no will. That is to say,'--he coloured a little,--'next to
none that I can put in action now. Trained by main force; broken,
not bent; heavily ironed with an object on which I was never
consulted and which was never mine; shipped away to the other end
of the world before I was of age, and exiled there until my
father's death there, a year ago; always grinding in a mill I
always hated; what is to be expected from me in middle life? Will,
purpose, hope? All those lights were extinguished before I could
sound the words.'

'Light 'em up again!' said Mr Meagles.

'Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr Meagles, of a hard father and
mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and
priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured,
and priced, had no existence. Strict people as the phrase is,
professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy
sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own,
offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their
possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this
world and terror in the next--nothing graceful or gentle anywhere,
and the void in my cowed heart everywhere--this was my childhood,
if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of
life.'

'Really though?' said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the
picture offered to his imagination. 'That was a tough
commencement. But come! You must now study, and profit by, all
that lies beyond it, like a practical man.'