"Come home to stay!" faltered Margaret. "I can take care of things here. I am better able to do it than you." "My father will not put me out of my place here," said Margaret, steadily. "He has confidence in me; he knows I do things just as he does." "And for that reason he makes you his substitute! Don't assume, Miss Maggie; you'd be more in your place stitching wristbands in the parlour than as the presiding genius in a drug-shop. How d'ye do, mother?" The sound of his voice had reached Mrs. Rymer. She did not believe her own ears, and came stealing forth to look, afraid of what she might see. To give Madam Rymer her due, she was quite as honest-natured as her husband; and the matter of the bank-note, the wrong use made of the keys she was foolish enough to lend surreptitiously to Mr. Benjamin, had brought her no light shock at the time. Ill-conduct in the shape of billiards, and beer, and idleness, she had found plenty of excuse for in her son; but when it came to felony, it was another thing altogether. "It _is_ him!" she muttered, as he saw her, and turned. "Where on earth have you sprung from?" demanded Mrs. Rymer. "Not from the skies, mother. Hearing the governor was on the sick list, I thought I ought to come over and see him." "None of your lies, Ben," said Mrs. Rymer. "_That_ has not brought you here. You are in some disgraceful mess again." "It _has_ brought me here--and nothing else," said Ben: and he spoke truth. "Ashton of Timberdale----" A faint groan--a crash as of breaking glass. When they turned to look, there was Rymer, fallen against the counter in his shock of surprise and weakness. His arm had thrown down an empty syrup-bottle. And that's how Benjamin Rymer came home. His father and mother had never seen him since before the discovery of the trouble; for as soon as he had changed the bank-note in the letter, he was off. The affair had frightened him a little--that is, the stir made over it, of which he had contrived to get notice; since then he had been passably steady, making a living for himself in Birmingham as assistant to a surgeon and druggist. He had met Robert Ashton a short time ago (this was the account he now gave), heard from that gentleman rather a bad account of his father, and so thought it his duty to give up what he was about, and come home. His duty! Ben Rymer's duty!! Ben was a tall, bony fellow, with a passably liberal education. He might not have been unsteady but for bad companions. Ben did not aid in robbing the butcher's till--he had not quite come to that--neither was he privy to it; but he did get persuaded into trying to dispose of one of the stolen notes. It had been the one desperate act of his life, and it had sobered him. Time, however, effaces impressions; from two to three years had gone on since then; nothing had transpired, never so much as a suspicion had fallen on Mr. Benjamin, and he grew bold and came home.