What could be troubling him? Was it that loss, only two years ago, by which one-half of his savings had been engulfed? Scarcely. A man dying--as he knew he was--would be unlikely to care about that now. Ample competence had remained to him, and he had neither son nor daughter to inherit. Hark! what is it that he is murmuring between his parched lips, to the accompaniment of his clenched hands? "I see it all now; I see it all! While we are buoyed up with health and strength, we continue hard, selfish, obstinate in our wickedness. But when death comes, we awake to our error; and death has come to me, and I have awakened to mine. Why did I turn him out like a dog? He had neither kith nor kin, and I sent him adrift on the world, to fight with it or to starve! He was the only child of my sister, and she was gone. She and I were of the same father and mother; we shared the same meals in childhood, the same home, the same play, the same hopes. She wrote to me when she was dying, as I am dying now: 'Richard, should my poor boy be left fatherless--for my husband's health seems to be failing--be his friend and protector for Helen's sake, and may Heaven bless you for it!' And I scoffed at the injunction when the boy offended me, and turned him out. _Shall I have to answer for it?_" The last anxious doubt was uttered more audibly than the rest; it escaped from his lips with a groan. A woman who was dozing over the fire started up. "Did you call, sir?" "No. Go out and leave me." "But----" "Go out and leave me," he repeated, with anger little fitted to his position. And the woman was speeding from the room, when he caught at the curtain and recalled her. "Are they not come?" "Not yet, sir. But, with this heavy fall, it's not to be wondered at. The highways must be almost impassable. With good roads they might have been here hours ago." She went out. He lay back on his pillow: his eyes wide open, but wearing the same dreamy look. You may be wondering who he is; though you probably guess, for you have heard of him once before as Mr. Cooper, the uncle who discarded Edgar Halliburton.