sorry that he did so; for if economy was an
object, I would gladly, merely for the sake of the interest I take in
him, have afforded gratuitous assistance to so clever and promising a
pupil."

The letter of Mr Baer, the mathematical tutor, was precisely to the
same effect. "I can only speak," he said, "from what I observed of your
son previous to last Christmas; since then I have not had the pleasure
of numbering him among my pupils."

When Mr Dalton's letter came, Mr Kennedy was exceedingly perplexed to
understand what it meant, and assumed that there must be some
unaccountable mistake. He simply could not believe that his son could
have asked him for the money on false pretences. But when Mr Baer's
letter confirmed the fact that Kennedy had not been reading with a tutor
either in classics or mathematics during the previous quarter, it seemed
impossible for any one any longer to shut his eyes to the truth.

When the real state of the case forced itself on Mr Kennedy's
conviction, his affliction was so deep that no language can adequately
describe what he suffered. In a few days his countenance became
sensibly older-looking, and his hair more grey. His favourite and only
surviving son had proved unworthy and base. Not only had he wasted time
in frivolous company, but clearly he must have sunk very low to be
guilty of a crime so heinous in itself, and so peculiarly wounding to a
father's heart, as the one which it was plain that he had committed.

At first Mr Kennedy could not trust himself to write, lest the anger
and indignation which usurped the place of sorrow should lead him into a
violence which might produce irreparable harm. Meanwhile, he bore in
silence the blows which had fallen. Not even to his daughter Eva did he
reveal the overwhelming secret of her brother's shame, but brooded in
loneliness over the fair promise of the past, blighted utterly in the
disgrace of the present. Often when he had looked at his young son, and
seen how glorious and how happy his life might be, he had determined to
shelter him from all evil, and endow him with means and opportunities
for every success. He had looked to him as a pride and stay in
declining manhood, and a comfort in old age. Edward Kennedy had been "a
child whom every eye that looked on loved," and now he was--; Mr
Kennedy _could_ not apply to him the only name which at once sprang up
to his lips. He wrote--

"Dear Edward,--When I tell you that it