e scorn and
contempt, the daily jeers, and the cut direct from his schoolfellows?
All was soon made plain. This boy's parents were old and very poor--so
poor, helpless, and friendless that they were often brought to the verge
of starvation. In those days, remember, there was not the same
attention paid to the poor of all classes, nor loving provision made for
their wants, as there is now. So the noble son--for truly noble he
was--submitted cheerfully to every trouble and shame that could fall
upon himself, in order to get food from time to time for his almost
famishing parents. They were too respectable to beg, and would have
never allowed their boy to beg for them; and yet so destitute were they
that they were even glad of those miserable scraps, the after-dinner
leavings on the boys' plates. And these their son gathered for them,
indifferent to the consequences which might happen to himself, while at
the same time he added a portion of his own daily food to supply the
wants of the old people.

"Ah! this was true moral courage, dear Walter; and it was all the
greater and nobler because it was exercised in such humble elements, as
it were--I mean under circumstances where there was everything to
degrade and nothing to elevate the poor boy in the eyes of his
schoolfellows."

"I see, aunt," said Walter, sadly and thoughtfully. "Yes, they called
him mean, and shabby, and selfish, and frowned and scowled at him, when
all the while he was most nobly denying himself, and bearing all that
trouble that he might help those who were dearer to him than his good
name with his schoolfellows. Ay, I see it all; and it's just a case in
point. That's just what I've been doing to my own dear noble brother,
who has been sacrificing himself that he might help poor Julia and her
little ones. And it has been worse in my case, because those Bluecoat
boys had perhaps no particular reason to think well of the other chap
before they found out what he had been driving at, and so it was natural
enough that they should suspect him. But it's been exactly the reverse
with me. I've had no reason to suspect Amos of anything but goodness.
All the baseness and meanness have been on my own part; and yet here
I've been judging him, and thinking the worst of him, and behaving
myself like a regular African gorilla to him.--Dear Amos, can you really
forgive me?"

Hands were clasped tightly across Miss Huntingdon's lap, and then Amos
asked, "And