startled by a boy (about your age, Harry, or a little older perhaps) who
came bounding from the door, and grasping my coat untreated me to go in
and see his grandfather.'

'Did you go, father?' inquired Effie, 'wasn't you afraid?'

'Afraid! what had he to be afraid of?' exclaimed her brother, 'I should
just as lief go as not.' Yet, notwithstanding the little boy's vaunt
there was a slight tremor on his lip, and his large blue eyes grew
larger still and darker where they were dark, while the whites became
unusually prominent.

'Of course I went,' resumed Mr Maurice, in a sad tone, 'and a fearful
spectacle did I behold. I had expected to see some poor widow, worn out
by toil and suffering, perchance by anguish and anxiety, dying alone, or
a family of helpless ones, such as I had often visited, or a drunken
husband. I had often glanced at guilt and crime, but never would my
imagination have pictured the scene before me. The room was dark and
loathsome, containing but few articles of furniture, and those battered
and defaced by age, and with a rickety bed in one corner, on which lay
stretched in mortal agony the figure of a wrinkled, gray-haired old man,
apparently approaching the final struggle. O my children, poverty,
loneliness, want, are the portion of many on this fair, beautiful earth,
but such utter wretchedness as appeared in that man's face, can only be
the result of crime.' Mr Maurice was evidently deeply affected, and his
wife and children were for a moment silent.

'Was he dying, father?' at length Harry ventured to inquire, in a
subdued tone.