voice--stronger, now, with the strength of the powerful stimulant--rang
out; "My boy--my boy--he is here! George, nurse, my boy is here!"

The door opened. A young man of perhaps twenty-two years stood on the
threshold.

The most casual observer would have seen that he was a son of the dying
woman. In the full flush of his young manhood's vigor, there was the same
modeling of the mouth, the same nose with finely turned nostrils, the same
dark eyes under a breadth of forehead; while the determined chin and the
well-squared jaw, together with a rather remarkable fineness of line,
told of an inherited mental and spiritual strength and grace as charming
as it is, in these days, rare. His dress was that of a gentleman of
culture and social position. His very bearing evidenced that he had never
been without means to gratify the legitimate tastes of a cultivated and
refined intelligence.

As he paused an instant in the open door to glance about that poverty
stricken room, a look of bewildering amazement swept over his handsome
face. He started to draw back--as if he had unintentionally entered the
wrong apartment. Looking at the doctor, his lips parted as if to apologize
for his intrusion. But before he could speak, his eyes met the eyes of the
woman on the bed.

With a cry of horror, he sprang forward;--"Mother! Mother!"

As he knelt there by the bed, when the first moments of their meeting were
past, he turned his face toward the doctor. From the physician his gaze
went to the nurse, then back again to his mother's old friend. His eyes
were burning with shame and sorrow--with pain and doubt and accusation.