ll day, and came home at
night, happy and contented with his lot.

His work was at the head of the shaft, at the very topmost part of the
towering breaker. When a mine car came up, loaded with coal, it was
his duty to push it to the dump, some forty feet away, to tip it till
the load ran out, and then to push it back to the waiting carriage.
Michael Maloney had been Billy's assistant here, in other years; but,
one day, Michael stepped back, inadvertently, into the open mouth of
the shaft, and, three minutes later, his mangled remains were gathered
up at the foot. Billy knew that Michael's widow was poor, with a
family of small children to care for, so he came and hired from her
a part of her cottage to live in, and took his meals with her, and
paid her generously. To this house he had taken Ralph. It was not an
elegant home, to be sure, but it was a home where no harsh word was
spoken from year's end to year's end; and to Ralph, fresh from his
dreadful life with Simon Craft, this was much, oh! very much, indeed.
The boy was very fond of "Uncle Billy," as he called him, and the days
and nights he spent with him were not unhappy ones. But since the day
when Mrs. Burnham turned his face to hers, and kissed him on his lips,
there had been a longing in his heart for something more; a longing
which, at first, he could not quite define, but which grew and
crystallized, at last, into a strong desire to merit and possess the
fond affection, and to live in the sweet presence, of a kind and
loving mother. He had always wanted a mother, ever since he could
remember. The thought of one had always brought a picture of perfect
happiness to his mind. But never, until now, had that want reached so
great proportions. It had come to be the leading motive and ambition
of his life. He yearned for mother-love and home affection, with an
intensity as passionate, a desire as deep, as ever stirred within the
heart of man. He had not revealed his longing to Bachelor Billy. He
feared that he might think he was discontented and unhappy, and he
would not have hurt his Uncle Billy's feelings for the world. So the
summer days went by, and he kept his thought in this matter, as much
as possible, to himself.

It had come to be the middle of September. There had been a three days
rain, which had so freshened the parched grass and checked the fading
of the leaves, that one might readily have thought the summer had
returned to bring new foliage and flow