14 WILLIAM GOSSAGE 



himself as one of those unfortunates who had 

 been fascinated to pursue this goalless path, 

 but had he lived to to-day he would have 

 witnessed that his baffled efforts, his renewed 

 struggles, his confident hopes, his cruel 

 disappointments, were not in vain. Once 

 so firmly did he believe that he had grasped 

 success that in a sanguine moment, when all 

 obstacles appeared to have been overcome, 

 he contracted with his neighbours to take 

 their "vat waste" and treat it so as to extract 

 the sulphur. This was a delusion; he soon 

 discovered his error. With one painful 

 exception his competitors released him from 

 his engagement, but the one held him to "his 

 pound of flesh," and relentlessly compelled 

 him to fulfil his contract. 



There are in the features of William 

 Gossage, as they are handed down to us, to 

 be detected traces of that sadness which 

 must have been often felt during those long 

 and severe struggles, and which must have 

 been terribly hard indeed to bear when a 

 neighbour's hand smote him a blow that had 

 well-nigh been fatal, for the compulsory exe- 

 cution of that contract abstracted from him 

 nearly all he possessed, possessions which 

 he was always prepared to lavish on those 



