Ephraim Judd's mother was a widow. Her husband, a journeyman carpenter by trade, had died many years before, leaving her with three young children and a small legacy of debts. Help, however, had come to her from various quarters. A home had been found for her two younger children, both of whom were girls, in a certain charitable institution, while she herself had been set up in a small way of business as a clearstarcher, and presently enough work had come to her in that line to keep her constantly employed. At this time Ephraim was at school, an earnest, painstaking lad, who wrote a beautiful hand, and had a clever head for figures. As it happened, Mr. Avison the elder was one of the school visitors, and Ephraim being one of the show scholars, his attention was drawn to the boy; and thus it fell out that when the latter was fourteen years old, a position as boy-messenger was found for him in the Bank. There, in the course of years, he had gradually worked himself up from the lowest rung of the ladder to the position we now find him occupying. Mrs. Judd still lived in the same humble domicile in which her husband had died, and Ephraim lodged with her, paying her a fixed weekly sum. To do the young fellow justice, he would fain have had the widow give up her clear-starching business, and remove with him to a house in a better class neighborhood. "I can afford it, mother," he used to say. "There's no need for you to do another day's work as long as you live." "And how should I contrive to get through the day, Ephy, my lad, if I had no work to do?" she would reply. "I'm not one of your fine ladies as can sit with their arms folded on their lap by the hour together. Thou must just let me go on as I have since thy father died, and instead of spending thy extry money on me, put it away in the Bank. Thou'll mayhap want it all one o' these days."