Mr. Spires was a good deal bruised, and wonderfully confounded and bewildered by his fall.  His clothes were one mass of mud, and his face was bleeding copiously; but when he had had a good draught of water, and his face washed, and had time to recover himself, it was found that he had received no serious injury.

“They had like to have done for me, though,” said he.

“Yes, and who saved you?” asked a gentleman.

“Ay, who was it? who was it?” asked the really warm-hearted manufacturer; “let me know?  I owe him my life.”

“There he is!” said several gentlemen, at the same instant, pushing forward Simon Deg.

“What, Simon!” said Mr. Spires, starting to his feet.  “Was it thee, my boy?” He did more, he stretched out his hand; the young man clasped it eagerly, and the two stood silent, and with a heart-felt emotion, which blended all the past into forgetfulness, and the future into a union more sacred than esteem.

A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires.  Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend, in defense of conscientious principle, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and reunion.

Simon Deg was now the richest man in Stockington.  His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation.  She had been his excellent and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.

Twenty-five years afterward, when the worthy old Spires was dead, and Simon Deg had himself two sons attained to manhood; when he had five times been mayor of Stockington, and had been knighted on the presentation of a loyal address; still his mother was living to see it; and William Watson, the shoemaker, was acting as a sort of orderly at Sir Simon’s chief manufactory.  He occupied the lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving on as it should do.

It was amazing how the most plebeian name of Simon Deg had slid, under the hands of the heralds, into the really aristocratical one of Sir Simon Degge.  They had traced him up a collateral kinship, spite of his own consciousness, to a baronet of the same name of the county of Stafford, and had given him a coat of arms that was really astonishing.

It was some years before this, that Sir Roger Rockville had breathed his last.  His title and estate had fallen into litigation.  Owing to two generations having passed without any issue of the Rockville family except the one son and heir, the claims, though numerous, were so mingled with obscuring circumstance, and so equally balanced, that the lawyers raised quibbles and difficulties enough to keep the property in Chancery, till they had not only consumed all the ready money and rental, but had made frightful inroads into the estate itself.  To save the remnant, the contending parties came to a compromise.  A neighboring squire, whose grandfather had married a Rockville, was allowed to secure the title, on condition that the rest carried off the residuum of the estate.  The woods and lands of Rockville were announced for sale!