'Her father dead! how was it?' 'He was thrown from his horse, and died the same day. She knew nothing of it till yesterday. I can not neglect her now. I will spend to-morrow with mother.' He always called her _mother_, though he was not her son. He had done it when a child, and now that he was a man, hers was the dearest name he knew. He loved her as his mother, and she loved him as her son. But any woman might have loved him. His straight, closely-knit, sinewy frame, dark, deep-set eyes, and broad, open forehead, overhung with thick, brown hair, were only the outshadowing of a beautiful mind, of an open, upright, manly nature, whose firm and steady integrity nothing could shake. 'I'm sorry to hear it,' I replied; 'but go down and see her, while I speak to Mr. Hallet.' Rapping at the door of an inner office, separated from the outer one by a ground-glass partition, I was admitted by a tall, dark man, who, with a stiff and slightly embarrassed manner, said to me: 'I am glad to see you, Mr. Kirke. Pray, be seated.' As he pointed to a chair, a shorter and younger gentleman, who was writing at another desk, rose, and slapping me familiarly on the back, exclaimed: 'My dear fellow, how are you?' 'Very well, Cragin, how are you?' 'Good as new--never better in my life--how goes the world with you?' The last speaker was not more than thirty-three, but a bald spot on the top of his head, and a slight falling-in of his mouth, caused by premature decay of the teeth, made him seem several years older. He had marked but not regular features, and a restless, dark eye, which opened and shut with a peculiar wink that kept time with the motion of his lips in speaking. His clothes were cut in a loose, jaunty style, and his manner, though brusque and abrupt, betokened, like his face, a free, frank, manly character. He was ten or twelve years the junior of the other, and as unlike him as one man can be unlike another. The older gentleman, as I have said, was tall and dark. He had a high, bold forehead, and wore heavy gray whiskers, trimmed with the utmost nicety, and meeting under a sharp, narrow chin. His face was large and full, and his nose pointed and prominent, but his mouth was small, and gathered in at the corners like a rat's; and, as if to add to the rat-resemblance, its small, white teeth seemed borrowed from the jaws of that animal. There was a stately precision in his manner, and a stealthy softness in his tread, that would have impressed a stranger unfavorably; but _I_ knew him. We had been boys together, and he loved me as he loved his own son. How well he loved _him_, the reader will learn, if he follows the course of my story. These two gentlemen--Mr. Hallet and Mr. Cragin--were the senior partners in the great house of Russell, Rollins & Co. Replying satisfactorily to the inquiry of Mr. Cragin, I turned to the older partner, and said: 'Well, Mr. Hallet, how does Frank get on?'