'It was a long time before he said anything, but after I had succeeded in warming some liquid, which I found in an old broken cup, over the decayed fire, I gave him a little of it, and in time he became much calmer. Between his paroxysms of pain, I induced him to give some account of himself, and the circumstances that brought him to his present situation, and what think you was the prime moving cause of all this wretchedness?'
'I suspect he was very poor,' said Effie.
'Something worse than that I should think,' added her brother, 'perhaps he was a gamester.'
'Or a drunkard,' suggested Effie.
'Or both,' responded the mother, or perhaps he commenced by being merely a time-waster, and money-waster, and finally was reduced to what persons of that stamp are very apt to consider the necessity of committing crime, by way of support.
Mr Maurice shook his head. 'It was neither poverty, nor play, nor drunkenness, nor indolence, nor extravagance, that made that old man wretched, and yet he was the most wretched being I ever saw.'
'He was poor, though, wasn't he, father?'
'Poverty is but a small thing, Effie, and in our land of equal laws and charitable institutions, very few suffer from absolute want, but that old man was richer (in gold and silver I mean) than I am.'
'What! and lived in that dreadful place, father?'