s than I was aware of. He
cannot last many minutes. He wants to see you."

The boy--for he was but little more--lay in a cot in the sick-bay. He
was dressed in his scarlet coat, and his sword lay beside him, for he
had refused to be divested of his uniform. He was in a half-sitting
position, propped up with pillows, and smiled faintly as Jack knelt by
his side and took his thin white hand in his.

It was a sad scene but a simple one. There was the gray light of early
morning struggling in through the open port, and falling on the dying
boy's face; falling, too, on M'Hearty's rough but kindly countenance,
and on the figures of the sick-bay servants standing by the cot-foot
tearful and frightened. That was all. But an open Bible lay upon the
coverlet, and in his left hand the young soldier clasped a
miniature--his little sweetheart's.

"Bury it with me," he whispered feebly. "See her, sir--and tell
her--Willie died a hero's death.--Kiss me, Jack--I would sleep now."

The eyelids closed.

Ah! they had closed for aye.

Not a sound now save Jack's gentle sobbing, then the slow and solemn
tones of M'Hearty's voice as he took up the little Bible and read from
the Twenty-third Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and
thy staff they comfort me." Amen!

CHAPTER XXII.

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.

"This little maxim, for my sake,
I pray you be believing:
The truest pleasures that we take
Are those that we are giving."
DIBDIN.

For more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story
commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane,
and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr.
Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less
with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well;
knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature--avaricious, grasping,
and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of
gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His niggardly habits had
undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave, when Gerty was little more
than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and
governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at
his partner's home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the
child Gerty, he made many and many a vi