“Was it though?” the policeman said; “then you may take my word for it, John, he comes to keep his eye on the boy. I’d bet a gallon to a pint he knows who the boy is, and is paid by his friends to let him know if he’s alive, and how he is getting on; yes, you may depend upon it, that’s about the mark.” John Holl and his wife looked at each other in astonishment. Sarah was the first to speak. “That’s it, John, sure enough. Like enough he’ll turn out some rich man’s son, and get all his money yet.” “I would not think that, Mrs. Holl; no, not if I was you,” policeman Brown said; “I should say his chance now is worse than it was before. Then some day, I don’t say it was likely, still there it was, it might have been found out by some accident who he was, but now it seems as if they must know where he is, and all about him, but don’t want to acknowledge or do anything for him.” “Then they’re a bad, unnatural lot, whoever they are,” Mrs. Holl said, indignantly, “and the poor lad a cripple too. But any ways, John, if he comes to look after James, we must speak him fair, for who knows, perhaps some day when they are dying they may be sorry for what they have done all these years, and turn round and send for him.” “That is so,” the policeman said; “let him come and go just as if you thought nothing more of him than before; if any good come of it, so much the better. If not, his visits won’t have done you any harm.” And so it was settled. Since that conversation Mr. Barton had paid his seven visits with his usual punctuality—this was his eighth. No hint was ever given by John and Sarah that they suspected the cause of his coming, and to James they had never spoken of what had passed, for he had gone to bed at the time when their discovery of Mr. Barton’s occupation was made, and they agreed that it was much better to say nothing to him on the subject. For some time the little party talked on indifferent matters, and then the cripple boy, who was rather fond of attacking William Holl, brought up the question of politics. James had read much, and variously. All these years that he had been crippled, he had had no other occupation, and he had thought as well as read; at ordinary times his diction, although better, still resembled that of those around him, but when he warmed into a subject he dropped this altogether, and spoke in the language of those in the world, of which he had seen so little and read so much. “Well, Uncle William, and how go on the Chartists?” “The great cause goes on well, James, as well or better than we could hope. The working classes are everywhere moving, and a deep feeling of discontent at their condition is fast gaining ground among them.” “And a great pity too, William,” Sarah Holl said; “we have always done very well before we got these Chartist notions into our heads, and for my part I can’t see what we want with them, or what good they are to do us, when we do get them.”