“I shall not expect to see you in Scranton again for some time, Mr. Cheekerton,” he said, “but when you do come this way, I trust you will honor me with a visit.”

“Thank you, sir.  When I return I shall expect to find that your brilliant scheme has met with deserved success; that old Craft has chuckled himself to death over his riches; and that my young friend Ralph is happy in his new home, and contented with such slight remnant of his fortune as may be left to him after you two are through with it.  By the way, let me ask just one favor of you on leaving, and that is that the boy may never know what a narrow escape he has had to-night, and may never know that he is not really the son of Robert Burnham.  It would be an awful blow to him to know that Old Simon is actually his grandfather; and there’s no need, now, to tell him.

  “‘Where ignorance is bliss,’ you know the rest,
  And a still tongue is generally the best.”

“Oh, no, indeed! the boy shall hear nothing of the kind from me.  I am very much obliged to you, however, for the true story of the matter.”

Under the circumstances Sharpman was outdoing himself in politeness, but he could not well outdo Rhyming Joe.  The young man extended his hand to the lawyer with a respectful bow.

“I shall long remember your extreme kindness and courtesy,” he said.

  “Henceforth the spider of a friendship true,
  Shall weave its silken web twixt me and you.”

My dear sir, I wish you a very good night!”

“Good-night!”

The young man placed his silk hat jauntily on his head, and passed through the outer office, whistling a low tune; out at the street door and down the walk; out into the gay world of dissipation, down into the treacherous depths of crime; one more of the many who have chained bright intellects to the chariot wheels of vice, and have been dragged through dust and mire to final and to irretrievable disaster.

A moment later a boy arose from a chair in the outer office and staggered out into the street.  It was Ralph.  He had heard it all.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ANGEL WITH THE SWORD.

Ralph had entered the office just as Rhyming Joe reached the point of his disclosure.  He had heard him declare, in emphatic tones:  “I say the boy Ralph is not Robert Burnham’s son.”

It was as though some one had struck him.  He dropped into a chair and sat as if under a spell, listening to every word that was uttered.  He was powerless to move or to speak until the man who had told the cruel story had passed by him in the dark and gone down the walk into the street.