en
seized with inflammation the day before. The fire blazed in a system that
was ripe for it. The doctors were baffled. Mortification had already
begun. He did not recognize me, but he spoke of me in his delirium in
terms of endearment, whilst curses against my mother rolled from his
unconscious lips. Three hours after my arrival he was a corpse. And such a
corpse! They told me it was my father, and I believed them.

"Are _you_, sir, fatherless?" asked Warton suddenly.

I told him, and he continued. "You have felt then the lightning shock
that has altered the very face of nature. Earth, before and after that
event, is not the same. It never was to human being yet. It cannot be.
What a secret is learnt upon that day! How tottering and insecure have
become the things of life that seemed so firm and fixed! The penalty is
heavy which we pay for the privilege to be our own master. Oh, the
desolation of a fatherless home! My father died, having made no will. So
it was said at first--but in a few days there was another version. My
mother's brother--the uncle that I spoke of--then appeared upon the
stage, and was most active for his sister's interests. He had never been
a friend of my father's. They had not spoken for years. I did not know
why. I had never enquired--for the man was a stranger to me, and since my
birth he had not crossed our threshold. My father believed that his
relative had wronged him--of this I was sure--and I hated him therefore
when he appeared. When my father was buried, this man produced a will. I
was present when it was read--bodily present; but my heart and soul were
away with him in the grave--and with him, sir, in heaven, beyond it. They
told me at the conclusion of the ceremony, that my father had died worth
fifty thousand pounds--that he had left my mother the bulk of his
property--to my sister a fortune of ten thousand pounds, and to me the
sum of a hundred and fifty pounds per annum. But they might have talked
to stone. What cared my young and inexperienced, and still bleeding
heart, for particulars and sums? A crust without him was more than
enough. It was more than I could swallow now--and what was _wealth_ to
me? My uncle, I heard afterwards, watched me as the different items were
read over, and seemed pleased to observe upon my face no sign of
disappointment. That he was pleased, I am certain, for he spoke kindly to
me when all was over, and said that I was a good boy, and should be taken
ca