'That a child would be born to you in a place like this?' said the
doctor. 'Bah, bah, sir, what does it signify? A little more
elbow-room is all we want here. We are quiet here; we don't get
badgered here; there's no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by
creditors and bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes
here to ask if a man's at home, and to say he'll stand on the door
mat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters about money to
this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom! I have had to-day's
practice at home and abroad, on a march, and aboard ship, and I'll
tell you this: I don't know that I have ever pursued it under such
quiet circumstances as here this day. Elsewhere, people are
restless, worried, hurried about, anxious respecting one thing,
anxious respecting another. Nothing of the kind here, sir. We
have done all that--we know the worst of it; we have got to the
bottom, we can't fall, and what have we found? Peace. That's the
word for it. Peace.' With this profession of faith, the doctor,
who was an old jail-bird, and was more sodden than usual, and had
the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket,
returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness, puffiness, red-
facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy.

Now, the debtor was a very different man from the doctor, but he
had already begun to travel, by his opposite segment of the circle,
to the same point. Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had
soon found a dull relief in it. He was under lock and key; but the
lock and key that kept him in, kept numbers of his troubles out.
If he had been a man with strength of purpose to face those
troubles and fight them, he might have broken the net that held
him, or broken his heart; but being what he was, he languidly
slipped into this smooth descent, and never more took one step