nd have decided to
give you the opportunity of making up for lost time in the way of
education; so I am going to send you off to a first-class commercial
academy, where you can stay two or three years if you will, and then
come back here qualified to make a valuable clerk. How would you like
that?"

Now, not so many months before, Mr. Drummond had made Terry a somewhat
similar offer, and it had met with no encouragement. But the boy saw
things with different eyes now. He had been made to realize his
deficiencies so keenly that the great desire of his heart was to have
the opportunity of repairing them, and he was all ready to spring at
the chance offered him.

"Faith, sir," he replied with a happy smile, "there's nothing I'd like
better, if I may say so; and if you're pleased to send me, I'll do my
very best to learn all they'll teach me."

"I fully believe you will, my boy," said Mr. Drummond, smiling back at
him; "I'll have arrangements made without delay."

For two full years Terry toiled hard at the academy, overcoming one by
one many difficulties and temptations that beset his path, and making
such rapid improvement from every point of view that, when he returned
to his desk, the keenest eye could hardly have recognized in the
good-looking youth with so easy a bearing the ragged wharf boy of a
little while before.

During his absence Black Mike died in hospital, and kind-hearted Mr.
Drummond placed Mrs. Ahearn in a comfortable cottage far away from
Blind Alley. Here Terry joined her, and the good woman had the
happiness of living to see her son become one of the most trusted and
highly-paid employes of Drummond and Brown.

Terry never forgot his own past. His heart was always warm in sympathy
towards the boys that played about the wharves, and he lost no
opportunity of saying a kind word or doing a kind deed on their behalf;
and they had no better friend in Halifax than Mr. Terrence Ahearn, who,
in rising from their ranks to a position of honour and emolument,
showed no foolish pride, nor sought to conceal whence he had come.

THE END.

The Boys New Library

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The British Legion. A Tale of the Carlist War. By HERBERT HAYENS,
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The Island of Gold. A Sea Story. By GORDON STABLES, M.D., R.N.,
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