fell swoop, and he found himself reduced to poverty. And as though
misfortune was not satisfied with visiting him thus heavily, the very
day of the failure he was stricken down by typhoid fever: not the
typhoid fever known in Canada--which is bad enough--but the terrible
putrid typhoid of the west, which is known nowhere else on the face of
the globe, and in which the mortality in some years reaches forty per
cent.

Of course I was at once called in. I did my best for the patient, which
was very little. I tried hard, however, to keep his wife sober, and to
compel her to nurse him judiciously. As for little Charlie, I took him
home with me to my own house, where he remained until his father was so
far convalescent as to prevent all fear of infection. Meanwhile I knew
nothing about Gagtooth's money having been deposited in the hands of
his employers, and consequently was ignorant of his loss. I did not
learn this circumstance for weeks afterwards, and of course had no
reason for supposing that his wife was in anywise straitened for money.
Once, when her husband had been prostrated for about a fortnight, I saw
her with a roll of bank notes in her hand. Little did I suspect how
they had been obtained.

Shortly after my patient had begun to sit up in his arm-chair for a
little while every day, he begged so hard for little Charlie's presence
that, as soon as I was satisfied that all danger of infection was past,
I consented to allow the child to return to his own home. In less than
a month afterwards the invalid was able to walk out in the garden for a
few minutes every day when the weather was favourable, and in these
walks Charlie was his constant companion. The affection of the poor
fellow for his flaxen-haired darling was manifested in every glance of
his eye, and in every tone of his voice. He would kiss the little chap