of stairs as she had been doing every day
for these months past. "Pokin' an' pryin' is it? Maybe so, maybe so. But
Nancy didn't mean it that way, no, lad, indeed she didn't. Nancy was
thinkin' of her own boy lyin' at rest out yonder with the green grass
growin' over him, her own boy that went the same way you're a goin' now.
He'd be about the same age as you, too, an' there's the look on your
face that I seen on his so often, the desperate, despairin' look that it
breaks my heart to see. I figured that if you was my boy, I'd be glad
for some one to tell you the truth an' try to bring you back to God
before it's too late. I'd figured, too, that most likely you had a
mother somewheres. She may be still on the earth prayin' for you an'
longin' for you, same as I prayed an' longed for my Danny for so many
years. She may be in heaven lookin' down on us now, but wherever she is
she'll be glad to know that I tried to bring you back. It's for her sake
that I'm doing this, for the sake of your poor mother wherever she may
be."

His mother! What memories that name conjured up! His mother who had
kissed and blessed him as she closed her eyes forever so many, many
years ago. He was still looking at the chair which Nancy had occupied
but he saw it not. He was a boy once more standing by his mother's
bedside, her soft, white hand in his, and was promising her--ah! how
many promises he had made holding that dear hand for the last time, and
how readily he had broken those promises every one!

His mind wandered on and he saw himself a boy at school, a youth at
college, a grown man filling a position of trust in a large business
concern. In those days, wherever he might turn, there was one figure
standing out before all others, one friend, tried and true. When boys at
school this friend had saved his life; when young men at college, it was
to this friend's continued help he owed any little success he may have
attained. After leaving college, his position was secured through the
kindly offices of this same friend whose desk was next his own in the
office in which they were employed.

His gaze still rested on the vacant chair but he saw only a pretty
little suburban cottage with flower garden and smooth green lawn and
box-bordered gravel paths. Once upon a time that cottage was his, and
the sweet-faced girl, who trod those paths so daintily, tripping to the
gate to meet him on his return in the evening, was his wife. Upstairs in
the nu