things had taken. The scales had been torn from his eyes with a force that left him bewildered. He had trusted his master in the way he trusted all the world, and now disillusion had come in a series of flashes which left him half blind, he felt life could never be the same. His own world of the higher reality was after all no more than the paradise of a fool. Perversely he had shut his eyes to the wickedness of men and their weak folly and in consequence he now found himself poised on the lip of a chasm.
Two days after the terrible discovery which had changed his attitude to life, he told his master that he was going to leave him. It was a heavy blow. Not for a moment had such a thing entered the old man's calculations. He had got into the habit of regarding this good simple fellow as having so little mind of his own that for all practical purposes he was now a part of himself.
So inconceivable was it to S. Gedge Antiques that one wedded to him by years of faithful service could take such a step, that it was hard to believe the young man meant what he said. He must be joking. But the wish was the anxious parent of the thought, for even if the old man's sight was failing, he was yet able to see the disdain in the eyes of William.
"I can't part with you, boy," he said bleakly.
That, indeed, was the open truth. To part with this absolutely honest and dependable fellow who had grown used to his ways, for whom no day's work was too long, for whom no task was too exacting, who was always obliging and cheerful, whose keen young sight and almost uncanny "nose" for a good thing had become quite indispensable to one who was no longer
