n him, and tried to teach him
better things; but he believed that his mother was only a woman, and
that he was wiser, and more skilful in worldly affairs, than she was.
He paid her three dollars a week out of his salary of five dollars, and
in doing this he believed that he discharged his whole duty to her.

Perhaps we ought again to apologize to Mr. Checkynshaw for leaving him
so long in such a disagreeable place as the poor home of his first
wife's sister; but he was seated before the cooking-stove, and the
contemplation of poverty would do him no harm; so we shall not beg his
pardon.

The banker looked around the room, at the meagre and mean furniture,
and then at the woman herself; her who had once been the belle of the
circle in which she moved, now clothed in the cheapest calico, her face
pale and hollow from hard work and ceaseless anxiety. Perhaps he found
it difficult to believe that she was the sister of his first wife.

"Where is Fitz?" asked he, in gruff accents.

"He has gone up in Summer Street. He will be back in a few minutes,"
replied Mrs. Wittleworth, as she seated herself opposite the banker,
still fearing that some new calamity was about to overtake her.

"I want to see him," added Mr. Checkynshaw, in the most uncompromising
tones.

"Fitz says you discharged him," continued the poor woman, heaving a
deep sigh.

"I didn't; he discharged himself. I could not endure the puppy's
impudence. But that is neither here nor there. I don't want to see him
about that."

"I hope you will take him back."

"Take him back if he will behave himself."

"Will you?" asked she, eagerly.

"I will; that is, if it turns out that he was not concerned in robbing
my safe."

"In what?" exclaimed Mrs. Wittleworth.

"My safe has been robbed of some of my most valuable papers."

"Robbed!"

"Yes, robbed."

"Did Fitz do it?" gasped the wretched mother; and this was even a
greater calamity than any she had dreaded.

"I don't know whether he did or not; that's what I want to find out;
that's what I want to see him for."

Mr. Checkynshaw proceeded to relate the circumstances under which the
safe had been robbed. Before he had finished, Fitz came in, and his
mother was too impatient to wait for her distinguished visitor to set
any of his verbal traps and snares. She bluntly informed her hopeful
son that he was suspected of being concerned in the robbery.

"I don't know anything about it. I had nothing to do wit