And the insatiate personage became again what he had been before—a poor little stone-breaker. As in the past, he worked on the highways as long as day lasted, in all weathers, in all seasons, in rain, in the burning sunshine, and in snow. He was always half dead with hunger, three-quarters dead with fatigue. But that did not prevent his being perfectly contented with his lot.
"PERFECTLY CONTENTED WITH HIS LOT."
Transcriber Notes:
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. In the article Pictures With Histories, there are two internal references to "page 232" (for a painting of Miss Gale) and to "page 233" (for a sketch of hidden Gainsborough). The hyperlinks are to the illustrations rather than the pages.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
On page 234, the single quotation mark after "DAUBS" was replaced with a double quotation mark.
On page 255, "idosyncrasy" was replaced with "idiosyncrasy".