This story is about John Duncan (forty-five-year-old man). He was a honest man and he was very poor, too. He and his two children were living in the small, miserable flat. The furniture was 20 years old, the wallpaper and carpets were cheap and dirty. He was a windower, because his wife, Rachel, drowned in the storm. When she had been alive, they used to live in big house in the country, with a large garden. They had everything that they needed. Then they (John and Rachel) had started the boat-building company, but after Rachel died he couldn't work, so the company had closed and he lost everything.