The thing he dreaded supremely was, that his wife or one of the children should die and he be unable to provide a decent burial.

At the death of the last child born to him the club had of course paid, and the confidence he felt in it for the future was a sensible support under the many miseries of his life, a support of which no idea can be formed by one who has never foreseen the possibility of those dear to him being carried to a pauper's grave.

It was a touching fact that he still kept up the payment for Clara; who could say but his daughter might yet come back to him to die?
To know that he had lost that one stronghold against fate was a stroke that left him scarcely strength to go about his daily work.
And he could not breathe a word of it to his wife.

Oh that better curse of poverty, which puts corrupting poison into the wounds inflicted by nature, which outrages the spirit's tenderness, which profanes with unutterable defilement the secret places of the mourning heart! He could not, durst not, speak a word of this misery to her whose gratitude and love had resisted every trial, who had shared uncomplainingly all the evil of his lot, and had borne with supreme patience those added sufferings of which he had no conception.

For she lay on her deathbed.