"But, sir," said the guest, after a short pause, "how is this? Fanny
tells me she supports you by her work. Are you so poor, then? Yet I
left you your son's bequest; and you, too, I understood, though not rich,
were not in want!"

"There was a curse on my gold," said the old man, sternly. "It was
stolen from us."

There was another pause. Simon broke it.

"And you, young man--how has it fared with you? You have prospered,
I hope."

"I am as I have been for years--alone in the world, without kindred and
without friends. But, thanks to Heaven, I am not a beggar!"

"No kindred and no friends!" repeated the old man. "No father--no
brother--no wife--no sister!"

"None! No one to care whether I live or die," answered the stranger,
with a mixture of pride and sadness in his voice. "But, as the song has
it--

"'I care for nobody--no, not I,
For nobody cares for me!'"

There was a certain pathos in the mockery with which he repeated the
homely lines, although, as he did, he gathered himself up, as if
conscious of a certain consolation and reliance on the resources not