“Madam, I have the most profound respect for your conscience and your judgment.  I trust that no meeting between us will be less pleasant than this one has been.  I wish you good-morning!”

“Good-morning, sir!”

Sharpman bowed himself gracefully out, and walked briskly down the street, with a smile on his face.  The execution of his scheme had met, thus far, with a success which he had hardly anticipated.

* * * * *

Every one about Burnham Breaker knew Bachelor Billy.  No one ever knew any ill of him.  He was simple and unlearned, but his heart was very large, and he was honest and manly to the marrow of his bones.  He had no ties of family or of kin, but every one who knew him was his friend; every child who saw him smiled up instinctively into his face; he was a brother to all men.  Gray spots were coming in his hair, his shoulders were bowed with toil, and his limbs were bent with disease, but the kind look never vanished from his rugged face, and the kind word never faltered on his lips.  He went to his task at Burnham Breaker in the early morning, he toiled all day, and came home at night, happy and contented with his lot.

His work was at the head of the shaft, at the very topmost part of the towering breaker.  When a mine car came up, loaded with coal, it was his duty to push it to the dump, some forty feet away, to tip it till the load ran out, and then to push it back to the waiting carriage.  Michael Maloney had been Billy’s assistant here, in other years; but, one day, Michael stepped back, inadvertently, into the open mouth of the shaft, and, three minutes later, his mangled remains were gathered up at the foot.  Billy knew that Michael’s widow was poor, with a family of small children to care for, so he came and hired from her a part of her cottage to live in, and took his meals with her, and paid her generously.  To this house he had taken Ralph.  It was not an elegant home, to be sure, but it was a home where no harsh word was spoken from year’s end to year’s end; and to Ralph, fresh from his dreadful life with Simon Craft, this was much, oh! very much, indeed.  The boy was very fond of “Uncle Billy,” as he called him, and the days and nights he spent with him were not unhappy ones.  But since the day when Mrs. Burnham turned his face to hers, and kissed him on his lips, there had been a longing in his heart for something more; a longing which, at first, he could not quite define, but which grew and crystallized, at last, into a strong desire to merit and possess the fond affection, and to live in the sweet presence, of a kind and loving mother.  He had always wanted a mother, ever since he could remember.  The thought of one had always brought a picture of perfect happiness to his mind.  But never, until now, had that want reached so great proportions.  It had come to be the leading motive and ambition of his life.  He yearned for mother-love and home affection, with an intensity as passionate, a desire as deep, as ever stirred within the heart of man.  He had not revealed his longing to Bachelor Billy.  He feared that he might think he was discontented and unhappy, and he would not have hurt his Uncle Billy’s feelings for the world.  So the summer days went by, and he kept his thought in this matter, as much as possible, to himself.