“Squire,” said the young man, stepping forward, “my wife wishes me to explain to you that her gratitude would be but ill-displayed were she, in return for all your great goodness to her child, to bring a cloud upon your later life. But for you, no one can say what might by this time have befallen the little waif; but for you, it would hardly have been possible that mother and son could ever have met again this side of the grave. Your goodness in adopting him and in giving him a home has been, under God’s guiding, the means of bringing them together—the main link in the chain of circumstances that has led to this goal. You have been a father to him in his hour of extremest need. My wife will never be willing to requite such goodness by robbing you of what sunshine the child’s love can bring.” The Squire looked steadily at the speaker, as if in doubt whither all this tended, and he glanced from one to the other, his face expressing more emotion than was its wont. “I do not quite grasp your meaning,” he said. “Our meaning is this,” said Uncle Fred, taking his wife’s hand and drawing it within his arm. “We both have known enough of loneliness and sorrow to be very unwilling to inflict it upon another. God in His great goodness has at length given us to one another, and changed all that was dark in our lives into light and joy. We have each other, and our cup of happiness is very full. One more great mercy has been vouchsafed us—restoring to my wife the child she believed she had lost—giving it to her to see him living in peace and happiness in a home that was opened to him in his hour of sore need. Squire,” concluded the young man, earnestly and with great feeling, “the whole matter stands thus: if the child has grown dear to you, if he is a comfort to you in your declining years, if you love one another, as we are told, like father and son, and you would feel personal loss and grief at his departure, he shall remain with you still. We are very near neighbors now. The child can see his mother daily, hourly, and yet be your boy, and live beneath your roof. There shall be no mine or thine with regard to him; if my wife is his mother, you at least have a claim to be called his father. We have one another, and our lives are bright; you are alone, and the boy has cheered you by his presence. So long as you need him, or wish for his companionship, we will not take him away. Our home is always open to him if ever you wish to be rid of your self-imposed charge; but so long as you care to have him with you, we will never claim him or take him away. The only difference the child shall find will be that he has two homes instead of one.” The Squire listened to this speech in unbroken silence, and not a muscle of his still face moved the while; but yet it softened in a wonderful way as the young man’s meaning became more and more clear, and the expression in the deep-set eyes now fixed upon her face touched Mrs. Arbuthnot to the quick.