But the child was white! What pen can describe the tumult that raged in Belton's bosom for months and months! Sadly, disconsolately, broken in spirit, thoroughly dejected, Belton dragged himself to his mother's cottage at Winchester.

Like a ship that had started on a voyage, on a bright day, with fair winds, but had been overtaken and overwhelmed in an ocean storm, and had been put back to shore, so Belton now brought his battered bark into harbor again.
His brothers and sisters had all married and had left the maternal roof.

Belton would sleep in the loft from which in his childhood he tumbled down, when disturbed about the disappearing biscuits.

How he longed and sighed for childhood's happy days to come again.

He felt that life was too awful for him to bear.
His feelings toward his wife were more of pity than reproach.