dreariest and most negative kind. He had no wife and children to
increase his anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various
failures in life. It might have been from mere insensibility, or
it might have been from generous unwillingness to involve another
in his own unlucky destiny, but the fact undoubtedly was, that he
had arrived at the middle term of life without marrying, and,
what is much more remarkable, without once exposing himself, from
eighteen to eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation of ever
having had a sweetheart.

When he was out of service he lived alone with his widowed
mother. Mrs. Scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly
station as to capacity and manners. She had seen better days, as
the phrase is, but she never referred to them in the presence of
curious visitors; and, though perfectly polite to every one who
approached her, never cultivated any intimacies among her
neighbors. She contrived to provide, hardly enough, for her
simple wants by doing rough work for the tailors, and always
managed to keep a decent home for her son to return to whenever
his ill luck drove him out helpless into the world.

One bleak autumn when Isaac was getting on fast toward forty and
when he was as usual out of place through no fault of his own, he
set forth, from his mother's cottage on a long walk inland to a
gentleman's seat where he had heard that a stable-helper was
required.

It wanted then but two days of his birthday; and Mrs. Scatchard,
with her usual fondness, made him promise, before he started,
that he would be back in time to keep that anniversary with her,