“He carried many a heavy load for me, though, when I was in my former hard place, and it’s a pity he is such a bad boy in some things,” thought Richard, as he trudged on. He left the books, offering to do any thing else he could, at his master’s, and felt all the anticipations of “_home_” more delightfully than ever, when he saw the candle-light glimmering through the chinks of his mother’s shutter. The tiny room seemed to him a paradise. The widow had finished her embroidery and was netting, so her eyes did not look as strained and weary as usual. There was something simmering and smelling very savory on the fire; but Richard put back his hand to pull out his piece of beef. It was gone! Richard had no doubt that his quandam “friend” had picked his pocket, more in fun than malice; and he was confirmed in the idea, by seeing a boy’s shadow on the wall of the opposite houses—Ned, doubtless, waiting to see how he bore his disappointment. His first impulse was to run out and thrash the thief; but the memory of their nodding companionship, and of the loads the unfortunate lad had carried for him twice or thrice—running off with what Richard had staggered under—harmonized by the perfume of the _pot au feu_, taught him forbearance, and the evening passed, as the widow said, “full of hope.” Many such succeeded. Richard well satisfied his master, although he was a reserved, peculiar man, not much known, and less liked; he frequented no public places, and kept little society, spending his evenings in making up his accounts, arranging his books, and reading. Matty had often told her confidential friend, the milk-woman, that “one might as well live in the house with a _corpse_,” adding her belief “that all would be corpses one day, for certain; and the sooner she was one the pleasanter it would be for herself, only that, being a lone woman, she thought while people had the holy breath of life in their bodies they might as well be alive—that was all.” Richard had numbered more than fourteen years when he entered Mr. Whitelock’s service. He managed to keep on speaking terms with Matty, for when she would not talk to him she talked at him. He frequently remained half an hour after all was shut up to read to her; and once when Mr. Whitelock called to her to inquire who was below, she answered, in a tone of fierce indignation, that it was only the “State of Europe, the French at another revulsion, and Spain on the top of the Pyramids.”