The young men listened in silence as Mrs. Holl told her story; standing, with her rough honest face lit up in the bright fire-glow, she related it simply, and as a matter of course, all unconscious of the good part she had taken in it, assuming no credit to herself, or seeing that she deserved any. When she had finished, there was a little silence; Frank passed his hand furtively across his eyes, and then Arthur sprang up and shook Mrs. Holl warmly by the hand, saying, “Your husband was right, Mrs. Holl; you are a good woman.” Mrs. Holl looked completely amazed, and stammered out, “Lor bless you, sir, there weren’t nothing out of the way in what I did, and there’s scores and scores would do the like. Having just lost my own little one, my heart went out to the poor little thing, and it seemed sent natural like to fill the place of the little angel who was gone from us. Bless your heart, sir, there weren’t nothing out of the way in that; nothing at all; and we have never had cause to regret it. The boy’s a good boy, and a clever boy; and he is a comfort and a help to us. A better boy never lived; but we have always grieved sorely over his accident.” “Then he was not originally lame, Mrs. Holl?” Prescott asked. “Dear me, no sir, not till he were six year old. It happened this a way: I were laid up at the time; I was just confined of Mary—she’s my eldest girl—and somehow, James he were out in the streets playing; I don’t rightly know how it happened, but never shall I forget when they brought him in, and said that a cart had run over him. John, he was in, which was lucky, for I think I lost my head like, and went clean out of my mind for a bit, for I loved him just like my own. They did not think he would have lived at first, for the cart had gone over the lower part of his body, and broke one of his thigh bones, and the other leg up high. It was a light cart, I have heard tell, or it must have killed him. He were in bed for months; and if you will believe me, if ever there was a patient little angel on earth, it was surely James. He never complained; and his chief trouble was for my sake. At last he got well, but the doctors said that he would never walk again, for they thought there were some damage done to his spine; and sure enough he never has walked. He is always cheerful, only he never likes going out; and never would go at all, if we did not almost make him; he thinks folks look at him. Then he took to the climbing work, and that did him good; and the last three years he has taken to making them wax flowers; and it has been a wonderful thing for him, that has. He has always been given to reading. John made a shift to teach him his letters; and then the children of the neighbours, they lent him their school books, and taught him what they knew; and in a short time, bless you, sir, he knew more than them all. He would sit and read for hours together. He is wonderful clever, James is.”