ordeal, for he had a distinct under-consciousness that it was of his own bringing on, that he had wilfully taken a bad road, and that just so long as he chose to pursue it, he need not expect to meet with any good.
He saw the business of which he was so proud, which he had built up by years of industry and prudence, decreasing day by day. No amount of skill or intelligence or caution could avert its decay. He loved his money. Every shilling of it had been honestly made, and was a testimony to his integrity. He felt keenly that he was being "rogued out of it" with a slow, implacable persistence that he could neither resist nor escape. All his life's labor was going at a sacrifice, and his foes hid themselves behind the bulwark of the law, and from that vantage-ground baited him into an agony of imprudent struggles against the iniquity of their injustice.
In a very short time after the lawsuit began it usurped every faculty and feeling of Jonathan's nature. He had no time for anything but the unnatural fight upon which he had entered. He resigned his management of the chapel affairs, and soon became irregular in all
