day must be most
gone, and he lay looking upon the little table where one night he had
seen Wilkins writing, with the quadroon standing behind his chair--that
night which he had remembered so distinctly and pondered on so much.

As he lay musing upon that event, his attention was attracted by a
singular noise outside his door, and the next moment it was thrown open,
and to Guly's utter astonishment the dwarf swung himself in upon his
long crutches, with Wilkins, looking like a giant, walking smilingly
behind him.

"Here's a friend that's true to you, Guly; he misses you, you see, as
well as the rest of us."

"Hih! hih! Monsieur," chuckled the little man, reaching up and catching
hold of Guly's fingers; "I have seen you nowhere to-day; I think you
very sick or very dead. I get no picayune to-day, no bean soup. Hih!
hih! Monsieur, I miss you very much."

"You are kind, to come and see me, my poor friend. It seems very natural
to see your face. You are welcome."

"Me welcome?" squeaked the dwarf, climbing up with much difficulty into
the chair Mr. Delancey had so recently left; "me welcome, Monsieur! Hih!
that's mor'n has been said to me these many years--hih! poor deformed
little devil that I am!"

Guly heard a sound, a strange sound, something between a schoolboy
snivel and a sob, and looking up, to his amazement saw a bright tear
rolling down his visitor's wrinkled cheek, and his one eye, seeming to
lie out farther on his face then ever, was glistening with more.

"You have never told me your name," said Guly, hoping to divert his
attention.

"No,'cause I never thort you cared to know it," returned the other,
wiping his eye on the cuff of his coat. "The boys call me King Richard,
because, as they say, he was stoop-shouldered like me, Monsieur. They
daren't exactly call me humped for fear of my crutches, hih! hih! You
can call me Richard, or Dick, or what you choose."

"You musn't talk too much to Monsieur," said Wilkins, kindly; "he is too
ill to hear much conversation--hurts his head."

"Hih! no, I won't hurt him. A picayune, Monsieur: I've had no bean soup,
to-day. Pauvre Richard!"

Wilkins dropped a piece of silver in the claw-like hand, and went back
into the store.

The dwarf sat rubbing the dime on his sleeve, brightening it, and
looking curiously at it with his one eye, as if to assure himself it was
good--then disposed of it somewhere about his person.

"Are you hungry, Richard?" asked the boy,