, Sir."

The thirteenth of January passed,--his birthday. He was now nineteen.
When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But
to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing
accomplishing,--to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,--to walk the
streets of a lonely city, and think of home,--these things make a
birthday sad and solitary.

At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,--it
was appalling. What was he to do?

Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from
starvation!" was his proud resolve.

Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already
done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable,
patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made
for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and
privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was
filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully
appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too
late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who
made them is no longer with us,--too often, alas, when she has passed
forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,--we awake at
once to a realization of her worth and of our loss.

What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt
that she at least ought to know his resources.

"This is all _I_ have for the present," he said to her one day, when
paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to
appear a swindler,"--with a gloomy smile.

"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I
would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any
money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry
yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils
yet."

"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if
my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am
situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall
be greatly obliged to you."

His voice shook a little as he spoke.

"As long as you please," she replied.

Just then there was a knock.

"Maybe that is for you!"

And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in
the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder.

She returned in a