saw little
Sally Wimble following."

"Oh, she was, was she?" cried the old man, glad of some one on whom to
vent his spleen. "That woman goes. How dare she leave the gates when
her husband is out? I shall be having the place robbed again."

"Yes, that is what she said, Josiah--that you had been robbed, and that
Don--my boy--oh, no, no, no; say it is not true."

Mrs Lavington looked wildly from one to the other, but there was a dead
silence, and in a few minutes the poor woman's manner had entirely
changed. When she first spoke it was as the timid, shrinking,
affectionate woman; now it was as the mother speaking in defence of her
child.

"I say it is not true," she cried. "You undertook to be a father to my
poor boy, and now you charge him with having robbed you."

"Laura, be calm," said the old merchant, quietly; "and you had better
take Kitty back home and wait."

"You have always been too stern and harsh with the poor boy," continued
Mrs Lavington, without heeding him. "I was foolish ever to come and
trust to you. How dare you charge him with such a crime?"

"I did not charge him with any crime, my dear Laura," said the old
merchant, gravely.

"Then it is not true?"

"It is true that I have been robbed, and that the man whom Lindon has
persisted in making his companion, in spite of all I have said to the
contrary, has charged him with the base, contemptible crime of robbing
the master who trusted him."

"But it is not true, Josiah; and that is what you always do, treat my
poor boy as if he were your servant instead of your nephew--your
sister's boy."

"I treat Lindon as if he were my son when we are at home," said the old
man, quietly. "When we are here at the office I treat him as my clerk,
and I trust him to look after my interests, and to defend me from
dishonest people."

Don looked up, and it was on his lips to say, "Indeed, uncle, I always
have done so," when the old man's next words seemed to chill and harden
him.

"But instead of doing his duty by me, I have constantly had to reprove
him for making a companion of a man whom I weakly, and against my better
judgment, allowed in the yard; and the result is I have been robbed, and
this man accuses Lindon of committing the robbery, and bribing him to
silence."

"But it is not true, Josiah. My son could not be guilty of such a
crime."

"He will have every opportunity of disproving it before the
magistrates," said Uncle Josiah, coldly.