me, because his wife--and I don't blame her--thinks I'm too wild for a City clerk's sober household.' "I asked Willy Losely what he meant to do with his son, and hinted that I might get the boy a commission in the army without purchase. "'No,' said Willy. 'I know what it is to set up for a gentleman on the capital of a beggar. It is to be a shuttlecock between discontent and temptation. I would not have my lost wife's son waste his life as I have done. He would be more spoiled, too, than I have been. The handsomest boy you ever saw-and bold as a lion. Once in that set' (pointing over his shoulder towards some of our sporting comrades, whose loud laughter every now and then reached our ears)--'once in that set, he would never be out of it--fit for nothing. I swore to his mother on her death-bed that I would bring him up to avoid my errors--that he should be no hanger-on and led-captain! Swore to her that he should be reared according to his real station--the station of his mother's kin--(I have no station)--and if I can but see him an honest British trader-- respectable, upright, equal to the highest--because no rich man's dependant, and no poor man's jest--my ambition will be satisfied. And now you understand, sir, why my boy is not here.' You would say a father who spoke thus had a man's honest stuff in him. Eh, Lionel!" "Yes, and a true gentleman's heart, too!" "So I thought; yet I fancied I knew the world! After that conversation, I quitted our host's roof, and only once or twice afterwards, at country- houses, met William Losely again. To say truth, his chief patrons and friends were not exactly in my set. But your father continued to see Willy pretty often. They took a great fancy to each other. Charlie, you know, was jovial--fond of private theatricals, too; in short, they became great allies. Some years after, as ill-luck would have it, Charles Haughton, while selling off his Middlesex property, was in immediate want of L1,200. He could get it on a bill, but not without security. His bills were already rather down in the market, and he had already exhausted most of the friends whose security was esteemed by accommodators any better than his own. In an evil hour he had learned that poor Willy had just L1,500 out upon mortgage; and the money-lender, who was lawyer for the property on which the mortgage was, knew it too. It was on the interest of this L1,500 that Willy lived, having spent the rest of his little capital in settling his son as a clerk in a first-rate commercial house. Charles Haughton went down to shoot at the house where Willy was a guest-shot with him--drank with him--talked with him--proved to him, no doubt, that long before the three months were over the Middlesex property would be sold; the bill taken up, Willy might trust to his Honour. Willy did trust. Like you, my dear Lionel, he had not moral courage to say 'No.' Your father, I am certain, meant to repay him; your