On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he would ask, “Has anybody called for me to-day?” But there was never any letter; and Mrs. Markham’s gentle response always was, “No one, Sir.”

The thirteenth of January passed,—­his birthday.  He was now nineteen.  When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant.  But to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing accomplishing,—­to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,—­to walk the streets of a lonely city, and think of home,—­these things make a birthday sad and solitary.

At last his money was all gone.  The prospect was more than dismal,—­it was appalling.  What was he to do?

Should he borrow of his uncle?  “Not unless it be to keep me from starvation!” was his proud resolve.

Should he apply to his mother?  The remembrance of what she had already done for him was as much as his heart could bear.  Her image, venerable, patient, blind, was before him:  he recalled the sacrifices she had made for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully appreciated all that love and devotion.  For so it is:  seldom, until too late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices.  But when she who made them is no longer with us,—­too often, alas, when she has passed forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,—­we awake at once to a realization of her worth and of our loss.

What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt that she at least ought to know his resources.

“This is all I have for the present,” he said to her one day, when paying his week’s bill.  “I thought you ought to know.  I do not wish to appear a swindler,”—­with a gloomy smile.

“You a swindler!” exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes.  “I would trust you as far as I would trust myself.  If you haven’t any money, never mind.  You shall stay, and pay me when you can.  Don’t worry yourself at all.  It will turn out right, I am sure.  You’ll have pupils yet.”

“I trust so,” said Salmon, touched by her kindness.  “At all events, if my life is spared, you shall be paid some day.  Now you know how I am situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall be greatly obliged to you.”

His voice shook a little as he spoke.

“As long as you please,” she replied.

Just then there was a knock.

“Maybe that is for you!”

And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder.

She returned in a minute with shining countenance.

“A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ——!  I have shown them into the parlor.”

Salmon was amazed.  Could it be true?  A pupil at last!  He gave a hurried glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his hair a touch, and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor.