the foot of the staircase. So in less than five minutes she
returned to the garret, exclaiming,--

"Here is Seth now, Mr. Wheeler. It is so fortunate I met him. Now I can
see you off." The old man was so weak that his son had to carry him down
the stairs; and his face, seen in the broad daylight, was ghastly. As they
placed him in the carriage, he called out to his wife and son, sharply,--

"Don't you get in! You can walk, you can walk. Mind, he's to have but a
quarter, tell him." And, as Seth whipped up his horses and drove off, the
words, "wolves, wolves, wolves," were heard coming in muffled tones
through the door.

"He'd never have gone, if you hadn't come back,--never," said Mrs.
Wheeler, as she turned to Mercy. "I never can thank you enough. It'll save
his life, getting him out of that garret."

Mercy did not say, but she thought that it was too late. A mortal
sickness had fastened upon the old man; and so it proved. When she went to
his home the next day, he was in a high fever and delirious; and he lived
only a few days. He had intervals of partial consciousness, and in those
he seemed to be much touched by the patient care which his two sons were
giving to him. He had always been a hard father; had compelled his sons
very early to earn their own living, and had refused to give them money,
which he could so easily have spared, to establish themselves in business.
Now, that it was too late, he repented.

"Good boys, good boys, good boys after all," he would mutter to himself,
as they bent over him, and nursed him tenderly in his helplessness. "Might
have left them more money, might have left them more. Mistake, mistake!"
Once he roused, and with great vehemence asked to have his lawyer sent for
immediately. But, when the lawyer came, the delirium had returned again:
it was too late; and the old man died without repairing the injustice he
had done. The last intelligible words he spoke were, "Mistake! mistake!"

And he had indeed made a mistake. When his will was opened, it was found
that the whole bulk of his large estate had been left to trustees, to be
held as a fund for assisting poor young men to a certain amount of capital
to go into business with,--the very thing which he had never done for his
own children. The trust was burdened with such preposterous conditions,
however, that it never could have amounted to any thing, even if the
courts had not come to the rescue, and mercifully broken the will,
div