Lewis Pryor spent the whole afternoon, with no company but his dog, in his own room, gazing, just as Skelton was doing at that very moment, with melancholy eyes out upon the watery landscape. How strange it was, thought Lewis, that the river, which made the whole scene so lovely and sparkling on a sunny day, should make it so sad on a dark day! Far down the troubled water, as the mists scurried to and fro, whipped by a sharp east wind, he could occasionally see the three desolate pine trees at Lone Point. They waved their giant arms madly, and fought the wild rain and the blast. The boy’s heart sank lower every hour. Yes, it was come--the thing that he had feared for so long with a biting fear. He was told that he was nobody’s son; that foolish old Mrs. Shapleigh was right when she said he looked like Skelton’s father--like that odious picture in the hall. How he hated it, and how he would like to throw it in the fire! But though his spirits sank, his courage remained high. A fortune was a very fine thing, but there was such a thing as paying too dear for it. The determination not to give in--to make a fight for his own respectability--grew and strengthened hourly within him. He went and got his few books with the name “Thomas Pryor, M. A.,” written in them, and names and dates. Then he got out the picture of the trim, sandy-haired Thomas Pryor, and tried vainly to see a likeness between his own clear-cut olive face and the one before him. Alas! there was no likeness. He then studied intently the pen-and-ink sketch of Mrs. Pryor. The coloring, which had really made some resemblance between her and Lewis, was lacking in the picture, and the cast of features was wholly unlike. Lewis got small comfort from that picture. He felt an inexpressible weight upon his boyish soul; he longed for comfort; he thought that he must be the only boy in the world who had never in all his life had any comforter except his dog, or anybody to whom he could confide his troubles. Something brought Hilary Blair to mind, and the scene at the bedside as Hilary held his mother’s hand and fondled it; and then Lewis laid his head down in the cushioned window seat and cried bitterly. The twilight came on; he heard the servants moving about below, and presently a tap came at the door. Bob Skinny announced, “Dinnah, my young marse!” Lewis winced at the word, which, however, was merely a magniloquent African compliment that Bob Skinny offered to all the very young gentlemen he knew.