She yielded patiently enough to my efforts, but, as she turned away, she cast one look at the mayor and with the tears rolling down her long and hollow cheeks murmured in horror and amaze: "He struck me!" The flash in Mayor Packard's eye showed sympathy, but the demands of the moment were too great for him to give to those pathetic words the full significance which I suddenly suspected them to hold.

As I led her tottering figure down the step and turned toward her door I said gently: "Who was the man?
Who was it that struck you ?" She answered quickly and with broken-hearted emphasis "My nephew! my sister's son, and I had come to give him all our money.

We have waited three days for him to come to us.

We thought he would when he knew the bonds had been found, but he never came near, never gave us a chance to enrich him; and when I heard he was ill and saw the carriage which had come to take him away, we could not stand it another minute and so I ran out and--and he struck me! looked in my face and struck me!" I folded her in my arms, there and then at the foot of her own doorstep, and when I felt her heart beating on mine, I whispered: "Bless God for it! He has a hard and cruel heart, and would make no good use of this money.

Live to spend it as your brother desired, to make over the old house and reinstate the old name.