Peter Lars--if he ever does--or ever looks for one. When
the old screw took you in, out of Christian charity, of course he had
no idea that you could ever grow up to be a man, and do the work of
two, and earn him a mint of money. Oh, no!--not he! he never dreamed of
such a thing! I say, has he ever increased your wages? or is my young
gentleman too high for such low ideas?"

"What are you driving at? what do you mean by all this nonsense?"
cried Walter, out of patience. "What can it signify to you, if my
foster-father--"

"Foster-father!" echoed the other, while his eyes were dancing with
malicious mirth. "Well, for a foster-father, perhaps, it might be fair
enough; but when we come to think of what a real father will do for a
son, we can't say much for what he has done for you--especially when we
consider what he ought to have done for your mother, that he left
undone."

Here he looked Walter full in the face. The young fellow stood before
him with heaving chest and quivering nostril, in fearful agitation. He
staggered back, and leaned against one of the trees that formed the
avenue. With a shriek of sardonic laughter: "Ha! is it possible?" he
cried, "just look at him! he really has no suspicion how things stand!
Ha! sancta simplicitas!--well, it was your luck that made me stop a day
or two at the 'Star', and lay hold of that old fellow of a porter, who
used to be in the Meister's service. I made him tell me the whole
story; and, but for me, this pretty pattern of a helpless orphan might
have lived to threescore-and-ten, without being so wise as to know its
own father!"

Walter still stood thunderstruck--his lips moved, but his voice failed
him.

"What makes the boy stand there, turning to stone, as though he had
just heard the trumpet sound for the judgment day? I say, don't you go
on being the soft chap you are, that anybody can take and twist to
their own purposes. You open your eyes, and look sharp, and take what
rightfully belongs to you. Take my advice--maintain your place in the
world in a proper manner, even if you did come into it in a manner that
may be called less proper.

"Come, let us be walking. I have a long way to go, and feel a most
desperate desire to get out of sight of that den of Philistines behind
us."

"Peter!" said Walter, struggling painfully to recover his composure;
"Is there more in what you have just been telling me, than mere talk
and gossipping nonsense?"

"Ask the old one, i