If he patented an invention, and exhausted his savings to
pay the fees, no capitalist would work it, or some other inventor
proved he had invented something so like it that there was no basis for
a monopoly.
At last there fell on him the heaviest blow of all. He had accumulated
L50 as a merchant's clerk, and was in negotiation for a small independent
business, when his wife, whom he loved tenderly, sickened.
For eight months he was distracted with hopes and fears. These gave way
to dismal certainty. She died, and left him broken-hearted and poor,
impoverished by the doctors, and pauperized by the undertaker. Then his
crushed heart had but one desire--to fly from the home that had lost its
sunshine, and the very country which had been calamitous to him.
He had one stanch friend, who had lately returned rich from New Zealand,
and had offered to send him out as his agent, and to lend him money in
the colony. Hope had declined, and his friend had taken the huff, and
had not written to him since. But Hope knew he was settled in Hull, and
too good-hearted at bottom to go from his word in his friend's present
sad condition.
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