had
been turned down, but not quite out.

A touch sent the flame brightly round the ring, and the shade cast a
warm glow on the boy's busy fingers as he took out paper and envelope;
and then, with trembling hand, sore heart, and a pen that spluttered, he
indited another letter, this time to Helen.

My dear Miss Grayson,

I am afraid you will think me a very ungrateful boy, but I am obliged
to go away to seek my fortune all over the world. You have been so
kind to me, and so has Doctor Grayson sometimes, but everybody else
has hated me, and made game of me because I was a workhouse boy, and I
could not bear it any longer, and Bob Dimsted said he wouldn't if he
was me, and we are going away together not to come back again any
more.--I am,

Your Affec Friend.

Dexter Grayson.

_PS_--I mean Obed Coleby, for I ought not to call myself Dexter any
more, and I would have scratched it out, only you always said it was
better not to scratch out mistakes because they made the paper look so
untidy.

I like you very much, and Mrs Millett too, but I can't take her fiz--
physick to-night.

Is physick spelt with a k?

There was a tear--a weak tear in each of Dexter's eyes as he wrote this
letter, for it brought up many a pleasant recollection of kindnesses on
Helen's part.

He had just finished, folded and directed this, when he fancied he heard
a door open across the hall.

Thrusting the note into his pocket so hastily that one corner went into
the toad, he caught up a piece of the doctor's foolscap, and began
rapidly to make a triangle upon it, at whose sides and points he placed
letters, and then, feeling like the miserable impostor he was, he
rapidly let his pen trace a confused line of _A's_ and _B's_ and _C's_,
and these backwards and forwards.

This went on for some minutes, so that there was a fair show upon the
paper, when the door softly opened, Helen peered in, and then coming
behind him bent down, and, in a very gentle and sisterly way, placed her
hands over his eyes.

"Why, my poor hard-working boy," she said gently. "So this is where you
are; and, oh dear, oh dear! Euclid again. That Mr Limpney will wear
your brains all away. There, come along, I am going to play to papa,
and then you and I will have a game at draughts."

Dexter rose with his heart beating, and that strange sensation of
something tugging at his conscience. Why were they all so kind to him
to-nigh