When Old Wheels was in his room again, it was natural that his thoughts should dwell much on the conversation that had taken place between himself and Lily. It brought the past before him, and he was painfully startled by the resemblance which the present crisis in the life of his darling bore to that other event in the life of her mother which had wrecked the happiness of that unhappy woman, He opened the cupboard, and saw the little iron box. Very sad were the thoughts it suggested as he brought it to the table and opened it. There was a little money in it, sufficient for a few weeks' expenses of their humble home; two or three mementoes of Lily, such as a piece of ribbon and a flower she had worn in her hair; and some old letters and papers worn and faded. He took them from the box, and sadly read one and another. Among them were letters from Lily's father to her mother during their days of courtship; and certain terms of expression in them brought to him the remembrance of sentiments almost similarly expressed by Alfred. The same vague declarations of being able to make large sums of money by unexplained means; the same selfishness, the same boastfulness, were there embodied. But not the same remorse which Alfred had already experienced; that was to come afterwards, and the despair which ever accompanies it. "We were happy then, my daughter and I," the old man murmured; "happy before he came. My daughter's life might not have ended as it did, in misery; might not have been passed, as it was, in miserable repinings. He brought a blight upon us." And then came the thought, "Like father, like son." He paced the room with disturbed steps. "Alfred's father," he thought, "wrecked the happiness of the woman who loved him, who trusted implicitly in him--wrecked the happiness of my daughter, who was once as bright as my darling Lily. And how she changed under the consequence of his vice and his folly! How she drooped, and drooped, until life became torture! As she trusted him and believed in him, and sacrificed herself for him, so Lily trusts and believes and is ready to sacrifice herself for Alfred. Shall I allow her to do this blindly? The end would not be the same, for Lily could not live through it. How can I save my darling? Would it not be better to inflict a sharp pain upon her now, than to see her walk blindly, confidingly, lovingly, to a desolate future?" At this point of his musings he heard the street-door open and shut, and heard a stumbling step in the passage below. Looking over the papers in the iron box, he came upon two which he opened and read. They were the last two documents connected with the career of Lily's father. One was a full quittance for a sum of money which the unhappy man had embezzled; the wording of the other was as follows: