"Yes, father, I promise." "I see it all clearly enough now. Your mother, Jack, is the best woman in the world. She loved you better than I did. She worked for you--that is a sad story. I hope you'll never hear it." Husband and wife looked at each other, and in that look the wife promised the husband that the son should never know the story of her desertion. "She was always against the betting, Jack; she always knew it would bring us ill-luck. I was once well off, but I lost everything. No good comes of money that one doesn't work for." "I'm sure you worked enough for what you won," said Esther; "travelling day and night from race-course to race-course. Standing on them race-courses in all weathers; it was the colds you caught standing on them race-courses that began the mischief." "I worked hard enough, that's true; but it was not the right kind of work.... I can't argue, Esther.... But I know the truth now, what you always said was the truth. No good comes of money that hasn't been properly earned." He sipped the brandy-and-milk and looked at Jack, who was crying bitterly. "You mustn't cry like that, Jack; I want you to listen to me. I've still something on my mind. Your mother, Jack, is the best woman that ever lived. You're too young to understand how good. I didn't know how good for a long time, but I found it all out in time, as you will later, Jack, when you are a man. I'd hoped to see you grow up to be a man, Jack, and your mother and I thought that you'd have a nice bit of money. But the money I hoped to leave you is all gone. What I feel most is that I'm leaving you and your mother as badly off as she was when I married her." He heaved a deep sigh, and Esther said-- "What is the good of talking of these things, weakening yourself for nothing?" "I must speak, Esther. I should die happy if I knew how you and the boy was going to live. You'll have to go out and work for him as you did before. It will be like beginning it all again." The tears rolled down his cheeks; he buried his face in his hands and sobbed, until the sobbing brought on a fit of coughing. Suddenly his mouth filled with blood. Jack went for the doctor, and all remedies were tried without avail. "There is one more remedy," the doctor said, "and if that fails you must prepare for the worst." But this last remedy proved successful, and the hæmorrhage was stopped, and William was undressed and put to bed. The doctor said, "He mustn't get up to-morrow." "You lie in bed to-morrow, and try to get up your strength. You've overdone yourself to-day." She had drawn his bed into the warmest corner, close by the fire, and had made up for herself a sort of bed by the window, where she might doze a bit, for she did not expect to get much sleep. She would have to be up and down many times to settle his pillows and give him milk or a little weak brandy-and-water.