Daniel Caldigate That piece of business was done.

It was one of the disagreeable things which he had had to do before he could get away to the gold-diggings, and it was done.

Now he had to say farewell to his father, and that would be a harder task.

As the moment was coming in which he must bid adieu to his father, perhaps for ever, and bid adieu to the old place which, though he despised it, he still loved, his heart was heavy within him.

He felt sure that his father had no special regard for him;--in which he was, of course, altogether wrong, and the old man was equally wrong in supposing that his son was unnaturally deficient in filial affection.