a slight dry cough, which was the highest note of his limited emotional
gamut. "Your mother, Ezra, died upon the very day that Harston's wife
gave birth to this daughter of his, seventeen years ago. Mrs. Harston
only survived a few days. I have heard him say that, perhaps, we should
also go together. We are in the hands of a higher Power, however, and
it seems that one shall be taken and another left."

"How will the money go if the doctors are right?" Ezra asked keenly.

"Every penny to the girl. She will be an heiress. There are no other
relations that I know of, except the Dimsdales, and they have a fair
fortune of their own. But I must go."

"By the way, malignant typhoid is very catching, is it not?"

"So they say," the merchant said quietly, and strode off through the
counting-house.

Ezra Girdlestone remained behind, stretching his legs In front of the
empty grate. "The governor is a hard nail," he soliloquized, as he
stared down at the shining steel bars. "Depend upon it, though, he
feels this more than he shows. Why, it's the only friend he ever had in
the world--or ever will have, in all probability. However, it's no
business of mine," with which comforting reflection he began to whistle
as he turned over the pages of the private day-book of the firm.

It is possible that his son's surmise was right, and that the gaunt,
unemotional African merchant felt an unwonted heartache as he hailed a
hansom and drove out to his friend's house at Fulham. He and Harston
had been charity schoolboys together, had roughed it together, risen