In this capacity my besetting sin was still haunting me.

I had several times been called into the manager's room, and reprimanded for unpunctuality, or cautioned for wasting my time.

The few friends who on my first coming to the town had taken an interest in me had dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance.

My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge--and a very unprofitable drudge too.

Such was my condition when, one morning, a telegram reached me from my mother to say--"Father is very ill.