Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a week, and when the end came he cried for the child. "Give me the boy," he said, and she lifted the child into his arms in bed. Then he raised his thin white hand to stroke the wavy hair, but the poor hand fell into the little one's face. Mrs. Drayton shifted in her seat, and tried to drive away the memories that trod on the heels of these recollections; but the roads were still dark, and nothing but an empty sky was to be seen, and the memories would not be driven away. She recalled the days when young Paul grew to be a lusty lad--daring, reckless, the first in mischief, the deepest in trouble. And there was no man's hand to check him, and people shook their heads and whispered, "He'll come to a bad end; he has the wickedness in his blood." Poor lad, it was not his fault if he had turned out a little wild and wayward and rough, and cruel to his own mother, as you might say, jostling her when he had a drop to drink, and maybe striking her when he didn't know what he was doing, and never turning his hand to honest work, but always dreaming of fortunes coming some day, and betting and racing, and going here and there, and never resting happy and content at home. It was not his fault: he had been led astray by bad companions. And then she didn't mind a blow--not she. Every woman had to bear the like of that. You want a world of patience if you have men creatures about you--that's all. Thinking of bad companions suggested to the landlady's mind, by some strange twist of which she was never fully conscious, the idea of Hugh Ritson. The gentleman who had come so strangely among them appeared to have a curious influence over Paul. He seemed to know something of Paul's mother. Paul himself rummaged matters up long ago, and found that the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead. Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since. One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive and hearty still!