you
here again, Ned? Ain't you afraid your old man will be after you, as
usual?"

"No," answered the person addressed, chuckling inwardly, "he's gone to
a prayer-meeting."

"You'll at least have the benefit of his prayers," was lightly remarked.

I turned to observe the young man more closely. His face I remembered,
though I could not identify him at first. But, when I heard him
addressed soon after as Ned Hargrove, I had a vivid recollection of a
little incident that occurred some years before, and which then made a
strong impression. The reader has hardly forgotten the visit of Mr.
Hargrove to the bar-room of the "Sickle and Sheaf," and the
conversation among some of its inmates, which his withdrawal, in
company with his son, then occasioned. The father's watchfulness over
his boy, and his efforts to save him from the allurements and
temptations of a bar-room, had proved, as now appeared, unavailing. The
son was several years older; but it was sadly evident, from the
expression of his face, that he had been growing older in evil faster
than in years.

The few words that I have mentioned as passing between this young man
and another inmate of the bar-room, caused me to turn back from the
door, through which I was about passing, and take a chair near to where
Hargrove had seated himself. As I did so, the eyes of Simon Slade
rested on the last-named individual.

"Ned Hargrove!" he said, speaking roughly--"if you want a drink, you'd
better get it, and make yourself scarce."

"Don't trouble yourself," retorted the young man, "you'll get your
money for the drink in good time."

This irritated the landlord, who swore at Hargrove violently, and said
something about not wanting boys about his place who couldn't stir from
home without having "daddy or mammy running after them."

"Never fear!" cried out the person who had first addressed
Hargrove--"his old man's gone to a prayer-meeting. We shan't have the
light of his pious countenance here to-night."

I fixed my eyes upon the young man to see what effect this coarse and
irreverent allusion to his father would have. A slight tinge of shame
was in his face; but I saw that he had not sufficient moral courage to
resent the shameful desecration of a parent's name. How should he, when
he was himself the first to desecrate that name?

"If he were forty fathoms deep in the infernal regions," answered
Slade, "he'd find out that Ned was here, and get half an hour's leave