, give me a call to-morrow morning."
And with a gesture to imply secrecy, Dunn moved away, leaving Bagwell in
a dream of gold-getting.

CHAPTER XIX. THE COTTAGE NEAR SNOWDON

At an early portion of this true story, our reader was incidentally told
that Charles Conway had a mother, and that she lived in Wales. Her home
was a little cottage near the village of Bedgellert, a neighborhood
wherein her ancestors had once possessed large estates, but of which not
an acre now acknowledged her as owner. Here, on a mere pittance, she had
lived for years a life of unbroken solitude. The few charities to
the poor her humble means permitted had served to make her loved and
respected; while her gentle manners and kind address gave her that sort
of eminence which such qualities are sure to attain in remote and simple
circles.

All her thoughts in life, all her wishes and ambitions, were centred in
her son; and although it was to the wild and reckless extravagance of
his early life that she owed the penury which now pressed her, although
but for his wasteful excesses she had still been in affluence and
comfort, she never attached to him the slightest blame, nor did her lips
ever utter one syllable of reproach. Strong in the conviction that so
long as the wild excesses of youth stamp nothing of dishonor on the
character, the true nature within has sustained no permanent injury, she
waited patiently for the time when, this season of self-indulgence over,
the higher dictates of manly reason would assert their influence,
and that Charley, having sown his wild oats, would come forth rather
chastened and sobered than stained by his intercourse with the world.

If this theory of hers has its advocates, there are many--and wise
people, too--who condemn it, and who deem those alone safe who have
been carefully guarded from the way of temptation, and have been kept
estranged from the seductions of pleasure. To ourselves the whole
question resolves itself into the nature of the individual, at the same
time that we had far rather repose our confidence in one who had borne
his share in life's passages, gaining his experience, mayhap, with cost,
but coming honorably through the trial, than on him who, standing apart,
had but looked out over the troubled ocean of human passion, nor risked
himself on the sea of man's temptations.

The former was Conway's case: he had led a life of boundless
extravagance; without any thought of the cost, he