hts may have been, he grew gradually to live beyond his means, and
as the years passed, he had recourse to the cards and dice in the hope,
no doubt, of recouping his vanishing fortune. It was true then, as it is
true now and always will be true, that the man who gambles because he
needs the money is sure to lose, and affairs went from bad to worse until
the final disaster came.

It was just after my tenth birthday. My mother and I were sitting
together on the broad porch which overlooked the river. She had been
reading to me from the Bible,--the parable of the talents,--in which and
in the kind advice of Parson Fontaine she found her only comfort in the
anxious days which had gone before, and which I knew nothing of. But the
lengthening shadows finally fell across the page, and she closed the book
and held it on her knee, while she talked to me about my lessons and a
ramble we had planned for the morrow. The red of the sunset still
lingered in the west, and a single crimson cloud hung poised high up
against the sky. I remember watching it as it turned to purple and then
to gray. A burst of singing came from the negro quarters behind the
house, and in the strip of woodland by the river the noises of the night
began to sound.

As the twilight deepened to darkness, my mother's voice faltered and
ceased, and when I glanced at her, I saw she had fallen into a reverie,
and that there was a shadow on her face. I have only to shut my eyes, and
the years roll back and she is sitting there again beside me, in her
white gown, simply made, and gathered at the waist with a broad blue
ribbon, her slim white hands playing with the book upon her knee, her
eyes gazing afar off across the water, her mouth drooping in the curve
which it had never known till recently, her wealth of blue-black hair
forming a halo round her head. Ah, that she were there when I open my
eyes again, that I might speak to her! For the bitterest thought that
ever came to me is one which troubles my rest from time to time even now:
Did I love her as she deserved; was I a staff for her to lean upon in her
trouble; was I not, rather, a careless, unseeing boy, who recked nothing
of the impending storm until it burst about him? I trust the tears which
have wet my pillow since have gladdened her heart in heaven.

I was awakened from the doze into which I had fallen by the sound of
rapid hoof-beats down the road. We listened to them in silence, as they
drew near and n