It was a sad scene but a simple one. There was the gray light of early morning struggling in through the open port, and falling on the dying boy's face; falling, too, on M'Hearty's rough but kindly countenance, and on the figures of the sick-bay servants standing by the cot-foot tearful and frightened. That was all. But an open Bible lay upon the coverlet, and in his left hand the young soldier clasped a miniature--his little sweetheart's. "Bury it with me," he whispered feebly. "See her, sir--and tell her--Willie died a hero's death.--Kiss me, Jack--I would sleep now." The eyelids closed. Ah! they had closed for aye. Not a sound now save Jack's gentle sobbing, then the slow and solemn tones of M'Hearty's voice as he took up the little Bible and read from the Twenty-third Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Amen! CHAPTER XXII. STILL WATERS RUN DEEP. "This little maxim, for my sake, I pray you be believing: The truest pleasures that we take Are those that we are giving." DIBDIN. For more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane, and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr. Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well; knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature--avaricious, grasping, and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His niggardly habits had undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave, when Gerty was little more than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at his partner's home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the child Gerty, he made many and many a visit to the house after her mother's death, when he had no real business to transact. "Poor little mite!" he thought; "she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to love save her father, to whom she is merely 'the child.'" It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane snap out, "Take away that child; it's troublesome." "Nay, nay," Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to his knee, "let me have the darling a minute." "Richards, you're a fool!" Keane would growl. And with one arm round her protector's neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!