Some sixty years since, there dwelt in the city of Boston, a merchant by the name of Sydney--a man justly beloved and respected for benevolence of character, integrity of purpose and of principle, and envied by the worldly for the enormous income which enabled him to surround his family with every luxury that money could procure. Early in life he had married a beautiful girl, to whom he was tenderly devoted. A son, whose name was Arthur, and who, to come at once to the point, was the original narrator of this story, was the sole offspring of this happy union, and, as may be supposed, the pride and idol of his parents. They watched over him with the most untiring affection, and endeavored to instil into his young mind those firm and honorable principles which rendered their own lives so lovely. But at the age of ten years the hand of death deprived Arthur Sydney of his gentle mother, and daily he missed her counsels and her embrace, and most bitterly did he mourn for the footstep that was to come no more. The loss of his wife was a stunning blow to Mr. Sydney. He never married again, for he had loved the departed one too well to think for an instant of supplying her place; and so four more years elapsed, and his child continued to be the only object of his cares. But at the termination of that period this good and just man was called to a mansion beyond the skies, doubtless there to claim the crown of immortality. And then Arthur was left alone in the wide world--a young and almost broken-hearted orphan. Upon searching into Mr. Sydney's affairs soon after his decease, to the surprise of every one, instead of leaving his son in the possession of an immense estate, there was not quite sufficient to meet the demands of creditors. When Arthur Sydney became older, he could not help suspecting that there was some mystery about this, for strictly honest as he had ever known his father to be, he could not believe that he would ever have swerved thus from the path of right. What was in reality the cause of this deficiency, whether it was owing, as his son afterward thought, to the craft and fraud of his executors, can only be answered from the curtain of futurity.