married and died, leaving his widow this one son, for whom in his own weakness he desired nothing so much as physical strength and bodily health. The boy had grown into a sturdy youth when the mother died, leaving him with little in the way of earthly possessions except well-knit limbs, a clear, strong, active mind, and an independent, self-reliant spirit. With these he had managed to work his way through college, turning his hand to anything which would help to provide him with the necessary means--keeping books, "coaching" other students, canvassing for various things, and doing work of other sorts, caring little whether it was dignified or undignified provided it was honest and promised the desired pecuniary return. After graduation he had accepted a tutorship in the college wherein he had studied--a position which he had resigned (about a year before the time at which we find him in a fit of the blues) to take upon himself the duties of "Professor of English Language and Literature, and Adjunct Professor of Mathematics," in a little collegiate institute with big pretensions in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia. In short, he had been knocked about in the world until he had acquired considerable confidence in his ability to earn a living at almost anything he might undertake. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is not probable that this energetic and self-confident young gentleman would have suffered the loss of his professorship to annoy him very seriously if it had not been accompanied by the other trouble mentioned. Indeed, the two had come so closely together, and were so intimately connected in other ways, that Mr. Robert Pagebrook was inclined to wonder, as he lay there in bed, whether there might not exist between them somewhere the relation of cause and effect. Whether there really was any other than an accidental blending of the two events I am sure I do not know; and the reader is at liberty, after hearing the brief story of their happening, to take either side he prefers of the question raised in Mr. Rob's mind. For myself, I find it impossible to determine the point. But here is the story, as young Pagebrook turned it over and over in his mind in spite of himself.