When the patient, plodding father died at the age of fifty-four, he left only the small cottage in which he lived, and the three thousand dollars in mill stock, which had paid him dividends for over thirty years. Mrs. Hungerford was a prudent and skilful woman, and she contrived to live very comfortably with her little family on the income of the stock, still occupying the small cottage which her husband had left. At this time John Hungerford had added the second zero to the number which indicated his wealth. For many years there had been no regular communication between the families of John and James. Mrs. Hungerford had written to her brother-in-law, whom she had never seen, the particulars of the death of her husband. A prompt reply had been returned, in which the man of money deplored the loss of the husband and father, and even intimated that, if any assistance were required, it would be rendered. The widow was too high-spirited and self-reliant to make any demands upon the wealthy brother, and she replied that her family was in comfortable circumstances, and had no occasion to trespass upon his liberality. In the mean time John himself, at the age of fifty-three, had married a widow who was the mother of a boy four years of age. Mrs. Lynch, who became Mrs. Hungerford by this arrangement, was an ambitious woman, who knew something of the extent of her husband’s possessions; but she found that John had an iron will. He would not even move from the mean dwelling he occupied to one better adapted to a man of his wealth. Few and slight were the changes adopted in the household; indeed, they were little more than the substitution of a wife for a housekeeper. The widow was disappointed and indignant; but John was growing old, and she temporized with the present that the future might yield a golden harvest. The man of wealth, as before hinted, was not a bad nor a hard-hearted man, and though Tom Lynch, his wife’s son, was not the most promising youth in the world, John Hungerford derived a solid pleasure from his company, and favors which the mother could not obtain were readily won by the son. Mrs. Hungerford was delighted with these indications, and hoped and expected that her boy would be the fortunate heir of the rich man. She kept the peace, and submitted to her disappointments in the most exemplary manner, believing that the day of her triumph was not far distant. Tom Lynch, in due time, was sent to a Pennsylvania college by his indulgent step-father, who had thus far obstinately refused to die, as his loving wife wished; and when John Hungerford had closed up his warehouses, and nominally retired from business, Tom had been graduated, and was studying a profession in Philadelphia.