had lost sight of her altogether, when, one night, he said
quite suddenly: "Dick, I wish you'd take a letter and a message to Mary
for me."

He hadn't called me Dick for years, and I thought he was drivelling, but
he held an open letter into which he was folding some banknotes.

"You may read it, Dick. They are in London, but she has not been to see
me, and she writes for help to tide over some difficulties, she says,
till her husband can see his father. She evidently doesn't know that the
alderman's in the bankruptcy court. Poor dear, poor dear, she's reaping
the fruits of her disobedience, and yet she will not come to see me. To
her own hand, Dick, to her own hand only, must this letter go. It tells
her how, in the last resort, she may seek my cousin, if she will not
come to me before I die. My poor savings--they are but little,
Dick--will be in trust for her with my cousin, but she sha'n't know that
from me. Could you take this to-morrow morning, Dick?"

I could do no less than promise to convey it to her, and the next
morning set off to find the house, in a rather mean neighbourhood, where
I found that she and her husband had taken furnished lodgings. A servant
girl took up my name, and I was asked to walk upstairs. There, upon the
landing, stood the woman I had not seen since the night she left her
father's home, but changed, as years should not have changed her, and
with a pleading anxious look in her scared eyes that was grievous to
see.

"Richard," she said with a faint smile, and holding out her hand, "is it
you?"

"I come as the bearer of a written message," I replied; "but if I can
ever do you real service you know well enough that I should gladly aid
you."

"Thank you, Richard," she said gently, "I know it; but my father, he is
well? His writing has changed though, it trembles so," and she burst
into tears as she went to the landing window to read the letter. She had
but just finished, and was slipping it into the bosom of her dress,
when, with a sudden gesture, she said, "I dare not stay. I hear him
coming up the street. Good-bye, good-bye, and take my love to papa, my
dear, dear love. Say I'll write again or see him; but now go, and take
no notice."

I went down, and should have passed quietly from the house, but a
latch-key turned in the street door, and, as I tried to go out, the
"Captain" stood in the way. I knew him, bloated, shabby, and broken down
as he looked, but should have said nothing