r, at any rate. It was a relief to Ralph to know that it was at
an end; that he was through with courts and lawyers and judges and
juries, and that there need be no further effort on his part to escape
from unmerited fortune. The tumult that had raged in his mind through
many hours was at last stilled, and that night he slept. He wanted
to go back the next morning to his work at the breaker, but Bachelor
Billy would not allow him to do so. He still looked very pale and
weak, and the anxious man resolved to come home at noon again that day
to see to the lad's health.

Indeed, as the morning wore on, Ralph acknowledged to himself that he
did not feel so well. His head was very heavy, and there was a bruised
feeling over the entire surface of his body. It was a dull day, too;
it rained a little now and then, and was cloudy all the morning. He
sat indoors the most of the time, reading a little, sleeping a little,
and thinking a great deal. The sense of his loss was coming back upon
him very strongly. It was not so much the loss of wealth, or of name,
or of the power to do other and better things than he had ever done
before that grieved him now. But it was that the dear and gentle lady
who was to have been his mother, who had verily been a mother to him
for one sweet day, was a mother to him no longer. To feel that he was
nothing to her now, no more, indeed, than any other ragged, dust-black
boy in Burnham Breaker, this was what brought pain and sorrow to his
heart, and made the hot tears come into his eyes in spite of his
determined effort to hold them back.

He was sitting in his accustomed chair, facing the dying embers of a
little wood fire that he had built, for the morning was a chilly one.

Behind him the door was opened and some one entered the room from the
street. He thought it was Bachelor Billy, just come from work, and
he straightened up in his chair and tried to wipe away the traces of
tears from his face before he should turn to give him greeting.

"Is that you, Uncle Billy?" he said; "ain't you home early?"

He was still rubbing industriously at his eyes. Receiving no answer he
looked around.

It was not Uncle Billy. It was Simon Craft.

Ralph uttered a cry of surprise and terror, and retreated into a
corner of the room. Old Simon, looking at him maliciously from under
his bushy brows, gradually extended his thin lips into a wicked smile.

"What!" he exclaimed, "is it possible that you are afraid of