d no one could tell me what had become of the forger's
children who once lived there. It was part of my punishment, and it may
be my long waiting is not yet over."

Here once more he paused, looking hard at me with his frightened eyes.
I was going to speak, but he stopped me.

"No; let me finish. I came here, sought work, and found it; and found
more than work--I found your friend. When I first met him he was
unhappy and friendless. You know why better than I do. I watched him,
and saw his gallant struggle against poverty and discouragement and
perhaps unkindness. I found in him the first congenial companion I had
met since she died. I shared his studies, and--and the rest you know.
But now," said he, as once more I was about to speak, "you will wonder
what all this has to do with the questions I asked you just now. You
may guess or you may not; I don't know. This is why. When she died,
and I madly deserted all the scenes of my old happiness, my two orphan
children were left in the charge of a nurse, a young married woman then,
whose name was Shield. Now do you wonder at my questions?"

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

HOW I CAME TO HAVE SEVERAL IMPORTANT CARES UPON ME.

I scarcely knew whether I was awake or dreaming as Mr Smith closed his
strange story with the inquiry--

"Now do you wonder at my questions?"

Little had I thought when that evening I knocked at his door and
entered, that before I left the room I should have found Jack's father.

It was some time before I could talk coherently or rationally, I was so
excited, so wild at the discovery. My impulse was to rush to Jack at
once, and tell him what I had found, to run for Mr Hawkesbury, to
telegraph to Mrs Shield--to _do_ something.

"Don't be foolish," said he, who was now as composed as he had lately
been wild and excited. "We may be wrong after all."

"But there can be no doubt," I said. "This Mrs Shield is his old nurse
and his sister's--he has told me so himself--who took care of them when
their father--went away."

Mr Smith sighed.

"Surely," I cried, "you will come and tell Jack all about it?"

"Not yet," said he, quietly. "I have waited all these years; I can wait
two days more--till his examinations are over--and then you must do it
for me, my boy."

It was late before I left him and went up to my bed in Jack's room.

There he lay sound asleep, with pale, untroubled face, dreaming perhaps
of his examination to-morrow, but litt