ve
always been poor?"

"It seems to me they are, my child," answered the widow, dispiritedly.
"But why do you think so?"

"Because," replied the young philosopher, "we are much poorer than the
woman who used to wash for us. She appeared to have everything she
wanted, but we have hardly anything."

It was unreasonable, to be sure, but sometimes Mrs. Farrell used to
wonder how her neighbors could be so hard-hearted as to go past
unconcernedly, and not notice the necessities which, all the while, she
was doing her best to keep from their knowledge. Often, too, as Stingy
Willis went in and out of the door so close to her own, she thought: "How
hard it is that this man should have riches hidden away, while I have
scarcely the wherewith to buy food for my children! Walls are said to
have ears,--why have they not also tongues to cry out to him, to tell him
of the misery so near? Is there nothing which could strike a spark of
human feeling from his flinty heart?" Then, reproaching herself for the
rebellious feeling, she would murmur a prayer for strength and patience.

The partition between the two houses was thin. She and Bernard could
frequently hear the old man moving about his dreary apartments, or going
up or down the stairs leading to the cellar. "Old Willis is counting his
money-bags again, I guess!" Bernard would say lightly, as the familiar
shuffling to and fro caught his ear; while his mother, to banish the
shadow of envious discontent, quietly told a decade of her Rosary.

The conversation anent the subject of the coal kept recurring to her mind
with odd persistency. Repeatedly of late she had awakened in the night
and heard the miser stumbling around; several times she was almost
certain he was in her cellar, and--yes, surely, _at the
coal_,--purloining it piece by piece, probably. Then just as, fully
aroused, she awaited further proof, the noise would cease, and she would
conclude she must have been mistaken. At last, however, it would seem
that her suspicions were confirmed.

On this occasion Mrs. Farrell had not retired at the usual hour. It was
after midnight, yet she was still occupied in a rather hopeless effort to
patch Jack's only pair of trousers; for he evinced as remarkable an
ability to wear out clothes as any son of a millionaire. The work was
tedious and progressed slowly, for her fingers were stiff and the effort
of sewing painful. Finally it was finished. With a sigh of relief she