; for I shall never forgive her, alive or dead.

"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

"GUY RABY."

When he had posted this letter he turned Edith's picture to the wall,
and wrote on the canvas--

"GONE INTO TRADE."

He sent for his attorney, made a new will, and bequeathed his land,
houses, goods, and chattels, to Dissolute Dick and his heirs forever.

CHAPTER III.

The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty
of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of
her sight. Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and
self-indulgent. She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought
home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.
Nor was she unqualified. If she had less learning than school-masters,
she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.
She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she
coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and
arithmetic. She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on
a button. He was a quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was
fourteen, his true genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed
a heaven-born gift for--carving in wood. This pleased Joseph Little
hugely, and he fostered it judiciously.

The boy worked, and thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies of
execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then current.
"Then learn to make your own, boy," cried Joseph Little, joyfully; and
so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening, forging, grinding,
handle-making, and cutlery: and Henry, young and enthusiastic, took his
turn at them all in right down earnest.

At twenty, he had sold many a piece of delicate carving, and could make
graving-tools incomparably superior to any he could buy; and, for his
age, was an accomplished mechanic.

Joseph Little went the way of all flesh.

They mourned and missed him; and, at Henry's earnest request, his mother
disposed of the plant, and went with him to London.

Then the battle of life began. He was a long time out of employment, and
they both lived on his mother's little fortune.

But Henry was never idle. He set up a little forge hard by, and worked
at it by day, and at night he would often sit carving, while his mother
read to him, and said he, "Mother, I'll never rest till I can carve the
bloom upon a plum."

Not to