He was only forty ; he was thirty when he had been convicted of embezzling the bank funds for purposes of speculation and had been sent to prison , leaving behind a wife and father who were broken-hearted and a sister whose pride had suffered more than her heart . He had never seen them since , but he knew what had happened in his absence . His wife had died two months later , leaving behind her a baby boy ; his father had died within the year . He had killed them ; he , John Churchill , who loved them , had killed them as surely as though his hand had struck them down in cold blood . His sister had taken the baby , his little son whom he had never seen , but for whom he had prepared such a birthright of dishonour . She had never forgiven her brother and she never wrote to him . He knew that she would have brought the boy up either in ignorance of his father 's crime or in utter detestation of it . When he came back to the world after his imprisonment , there was not a single friendly hand to clasp his and help him struggle up again . The best his friends had been able to do for him was to forget him . He was filled with bitterness and despair and a gnawing hatred of the world of brightness around him . He had no place in it ; he was an ugly blot on it . He was a friendless , wifeless , homeless man who could not so much as look his fellow men in the face , who must henceforth consort with outcasts . In his extremity he hated God and man , burning with futile resentment against both . Only one feeling of tenderness yet remained in his heart ; it centred around the thought of his little son . When he left the prison he had made up his mind what to do . He had a little money which his father had left him , enough to take him west . He would go there , under a new name . There would be novelty and adventure to blot out the memories of the old years . He did not care what became of him , since there was no one else to care . He knew in his heart that his future career would probably lead him still further and further downward , but that did not matter .
If there had been anybody to care , he might have thought it worthwhile XXXXX struggle back to respectability and trample his shame under feet that should henceforth walk only in the ways of honour and honesty .
In around behind of on since that to up within