ss
would be sheltered. He was so sure of the boy's honest heart and
moral firmness that he knew wealth would be a blessing to him and not
a curse.

And a beautiful home! Once he had been in Robert Burnham's house; and,
for days thereafter, its richness and beauty and its homelike air had
haunted him wherever he went. Yes, the boy would have a beautiful
home. He looked around on the bare walls and scanty furniture of his
own poor dwelling-place as if comparing them with the comforts and
luxuries of the Burnham mansion. The contrast was a sharp one, the
change would be great. But Ralph was so delicate in taste and fancy,
so high-minded, so pure-souled, that nothing would be too beautiful
for him, no luxury would seem strange, no life would be so exalted
that he could not hold himself at its level. The home that had haunted
Bachelor Billy's fancy was the home for Ralph, and there he should
dwell. But then--and the thought came suddenly and for the first time
into the man's mind--when the boy went there to live, he, Billy, would
be alone, _alone_. He would have no one to chatter brightly to him
at the dawn of day, no one to walk with him to their daily tasks at
Burnham Breaker, to eat from the same pail with him the dinner that
had been prepared for both, to come home with him at night, and fill
the bare room in which they lived with light and cheer enough to flood
a palace. Instead of that, every day would be like this day had been,
every night would be as dull and lonely as the night now passing.

How could he ever endure them?

He was staring intently into the fire, clutching his pipe in his hand,
and spilling from it the tobacco he had forgotten to smoke.

The lad would have a mother, too,--a kind, good, beautiful mother to
love him, to caress him, to do a million more things for him than his
Uncle Billy had ever done or ever could do. And the boy would love his
mother, he would love her very tenderly; he ought to; it was right
that he should; but in the beauty and sweetness of such a life as that
would Ralph remember him? How could he hope it? Yet, how could he bear
to be forgotten by the child? How could he ever bear it?

In his intensity of thought the man had risen to his feet, grasping
his clay pipe so closely that it broke and fell in fragments to the
hearth.

He looked around again on the bare walls of his home, down on his own
bent form, on his patched, soiled clothing and his clumsy shoes, then
he sank