bly no good, to keep his note."

"I will keep it," decided Philip. "It seems that this and the mining
shares are all that father had to leave me. They will probably never
yield me a cent, but I will keep them in remembrance of him."

Phillip found his father's watch. It was an old-fashioned gold watch,
but of no great value even when new. Now, after twenty years' use, it
would command a very small price at the coming sale.

Ever since Philip had been old enough to notice anything, he remembered
this watch, which was so closely identified with his father that more
than anything else it called him to mind. Philip looked at it wistfully
as it lay in his hand. "I wish I could keep it," he said to himself.
"No one else will value it much, but it would always speak to me of my
father. I wonder if I might keep it?"

Philip had a mind to put it into his pocket, but the spirit of honesty
forbade.

"It must be sold," he said, with a sigh. "Without it there wouldn't be
enough to pay what we owe, and when I leave Norton, I don't want any one
to say that my father died in his debt."

There was nothing else in the desk which called for particular notice or
appeared to be of any special value. After a careful examination, Philip
closed it and looked around at the familiar furniture of the few rooms
which the house contained.

There was one object which he personally valued more than anything
else. This was his violin, on which he had learned all that he knew of
playing. His father had bought it for him four years before. It was not
costly, but it was of good tone, and Philip had passed many pleasant
hours in practicing on it.

"I can take this violin, at any rate," said Philip to himself. "It
belongs to me, and no one else has a claim on it. I think I will take it
with me and leave it at Frank Dunbar's, so that it needn't get into the
sale."

He put back the violin into the case and laid it on one side. Then he
sat down in the arm-chair, which had been his father's favorite seat,
and tried to fix his mind upon the unknown future which lay before him.

He had sat there for half an hour, revolving in his mind various
thoughts and plans, when he heard a tap on the window, and looking up,
saw through the pane the coarse, red face of Nick Holden, a young fellow
of eighteen, the son of the village butcher.

"Let me in!" said Nick; "I want to see you on business."

CHAPTER III. NICK HOLDEN'S CALL.

Philip had never li