For a very few moments did the lovely lad remain in his kneeling position, embracing the child. Utterly exhausted, by drink, by want of rest, by the terrific excitement of this and previous sleepless nights, his eyes closed, and with wild shudders he sank fainting to the ground. In response to Mrs. Chester's entreaties, the lodgers assisted her to place him on the bed, and this being done she asked them to go down for her clothes, and to bring her word how her husband is. "And take the children away," she said with a wan smile. "I shall stop with my boy and nurse him. I am not frightened of him. He will not hurt me. See, the poor lad has no more strength than a baby." As they left the room with the children, the mother bent over her degraded son, with love and pity in her heart, and her scalding tears fell on his white lips and on the lucky mole on his temple which was to bring sudden wealth and honour to its possessor. CHAPTER VIII. Early the next morning, while Mrs. Chester, weary and sad-hearted, was watching by the bedside of her son, the tongues of the neighbours were wagging over extravagant accounts of the occurrences of the night. The early breakfasts were eaten with more than ordinary relish, and a pleasant animation pervaded the neighbourhood. The pictures that were drawn by the gossips of the return of the prodigal son, and of the scenes that took place in the house of the Chesters, culminating with the frightful struggle, were not drawn in black and white. Colour was freely and liberally laid on, and the most praiseworthy attention was paid to detail during the circulation of the various editions. Thus, Mrs. Smith, who had it from Mrs. Jones, who had it from Mrs. Weatherall, who had it from Mrs. Chizlet, who had it from Mrs. Johnson, who had it from Mrs. Ball, who had it from Mrs. Pascoe, who had it from Mrs. Midge, "who lives in the house, my dear!" happening to meet Mrs. Phillips, was most careful and precise in her description of Ned Chester prowling about the house for nights and nights, of his adventures during the last four years, of the interview between him and his father, of the father wishing to turn the son out of the house, of the son refusing to go, of the mother interposing, and begging on her knees that her husband would not be so cruel to their only boy, of his flinging her brutally aside, of the commencement of the struggle and its duration, of the setting fire to the house, and the mercy it was that the lodgers weren't all burnt in their beds, and of a hundred other details the truth of which it was next to impossible to doubt.