d the farm about six o'clock--later than his usual time,
and he knew his mother would be sure to inquire the reason; and,
besides, his hair was very rough, and there was a suspicious-looking
red mark on his left cheekbone. However, he was no sooner inside the
house than he ran straight up-stairs to his mother. Her bedroom door
was just ajar, and hearing a strange voice proceeding from the room.
Harry knew some one was with her; so he sat down on the stairs, hoping
that it would not be long before he might go in to see her. His heart
was bursting to tell her all. He could keep it a secret no longer.
To-morrow was the dreaded day when he was to be taken before Dr Palmer,
and what the punishment might be, he dared not think. Expulsion,
perhaps: certainly the loss of his place in his class, and nothing
scarcely could be worse than that. Poor boy, he was in ignorance (and
happily so) of the extent of the fault of cribbing. Most boys would
have said: "I shall get a good caning, but I can get my crib again soon
enough."

It was a lady who was with Mrs Campbell; so Harry knew from the voice,
which was soft and sweet. She was talking quietly to his mother about
her death; and as the words fell upon the silence. Harry listened
eagerly for every syllable, nervous and trembling, and grew more
miserable as each minute stole wearily by.

"It wouldn't have been so hard to die," Mrs Campbell was saying, "if he
could only have been with me till the last. Dear Alan! I wonder where
he is now?"

"Yet think, dear Mrs Campbell, how he is spared the pain of seeing you
suffer," said the doctor's wife, for it was she. "You love him well
enough, I know, to enable you to think this, don't you?"

"Oh, yes! yes!" answered the dying wife. "God knows what is for our
good. It may have saved him much pain and sorrow. Dear Alan!" and her
voice grew very low. She was talking half to herself. Then, as the
new thought flashed across, she said again aloud, "But what will become
of Harry when I am gone, and Alan out at sea?"

And Harry, where he sat on the stairs in the deepening dusk, burst into
tears. His mother's quick ears caught the sound of his sobs, and she
exclaimed:

"Why, there is Harry crying on the stairs? Tell him to come in, will
you, Mrs Bromley?"

Harry needed no telling. He was soon in the room, at his mother's
bedside, and clasped in her arms.

"Don't cry, Harry, darling," the weak voice said. "Don't cry so!"