mortgage which I had on his home. An acquaintance of mine sneered at my
lack of business keenness, and predicted that my money would be totally
lost, when I told him perhaps it was the best investment I ever made."
He smiled incredulously and said, "I would rather see it than hear of
it: but I will say that in all my business career I never received any
money that came so opportune as this. It reminds me of the stories that
I have read in fairy books. People so often fail in paying their own
debts, it seems almost a mystery to me that you should pay a debt
contracted by your father when you were but a boy."

"The clue to this mystery has been the blessed influence of my sainted
mother;" and a flush of satisfaction mantled his cheek as he referred to
her.

"After my father's death my mother was very poor. When she looked into
the drawer there were only sixty cents in money. Of course, he had some
personal property, but it was not immediately available like money, but
through the help of kind friends she was enabled to give him a
respectable funeral. Like many other women in her condition of life,
she had been brought up in entire ignorance of managing any other
business, than that which belonged to her household. For years she had
been shielded in the warm clasp of loving arms, but now she had to bare
her breast to the storm and be father and mother both to her little
ones. My father as you know died in debt, and he was hardly in his grave
when his creditors were upon her track. I have often heard her speak in
the most grateful manner of your forbearance and kindness to her in her
hour of trouble. My mother went to see my father's principal creditor
and asked him only to give her a little time to straighten out the
tangled threads of her business, but he was inexorable, and said that he
had waited and lost by it. Very soon he had an administrator appointed