"Don't I, Miss Gray," he replied, with a dreary smile, "well, that's a wonder! Look here!" he added, leading her into the shop where his tallow candle shed but a dim, dull light, "look here," he continued, raising it high, and turning it round so that it cast its faint gleam over the whole place, "look here; there's a shop for you, Miss Gray. How long ago is it since you, and your mother, and Mary and I we settled that shop? Look at it now, I say--look at it now. Look here!" and he thrust the light down a cask, "empty! Look there!" and he raised the lid of a tea-chest, "empty! Do you wish to try the drawers? Oh! they are all labelled, but what's in 'em. Miss Gray? nothing! It's well the customers have left off coming; for I couldn't serve them; couldn't accommodate them, I am sorry to say," and he laughed very bitterly. "I was happy when I came here," he resumed, "I had hope; I thought there was an opening; I thought there was room for me. I set up this shop; I did it all up myself, as you know-- every inch of it; I painted it; I put the fixtures in; I drove every nail in with my own hand, and what's been the upshot of it all, Miss Gray?" Rachel raised her soft brown eyes to his: "It is the will of God," she said, "and God knows best, for He is good." Richard Jones looked at her and smiled almost sternly, for suffering gives dignity to the meanest, and no man, when he feels deeply, is the same man as when his feelings are unstirred. "Miss Gray," he said, "I have worked from my youth--slaved some would say; I hoped to make out something for myself and my child, and it was more of her than of myself I thought I wronged none; I did my best; a rich man steps in, and I am bewared--and you tell me God is good--mind, I don't say he aint--but is he good to me?" Rachel Gray shook with nervous emotion from head to foot She was pained-- she was distressed at the question. Still more distressed because her mind was so bewildered, because her ideas were in such strange tumult, that with the most ardent wish to speak, she could not. As when in a dream we struggle to move and cannot, our will being fettered by the slumber of the body, so Rachel felt then, so alas! for her torment she felt almost always; conscious of truths sublime, beautiful and consoling, but unable to express them in speech. "God is good," she said again, clinging to that truth as to her anchor of safety. Again Richard Jones smiled. "And my child, Miss Gray," he said, lowering his voice so that his words could not reach the next room, "going by inches before my very eyes; yet I must look on and not go mad. I must be beggared, and I must bear it; I must become childless, and I must bear it. And the wicked thrive, and the wicked's children outlive them, for God is good to them, Miss Gray." The eyes of Rachel filled with tears; her brow became clouded. "Ah! Mr. Jones," she said, "do not complain; you have loved your child."