Something had gone wrong at the foot of the shaft.  There were no cars ready for hoisting, and Billy and his co-laborer, Andy Gilgallon, were able to rest for many minutes from their toil.

As they sat looking down upon the green landscape below them, Bachelor Billy’s attention was attracted to a boy who was hurrying along the turnpike road a quarter of a mile away.  He came to the foot of the hill and turned up the path to the breaker, looking up to the men in the shaft-tower as he hastened on, and waving his hand to them.

“I believe it’s Ralph,” said Billy, “it surely is.  An ye’ll mind both carriages for a bit when they start up, Andy, I’ll go t’ the lad,” and he hurried across the tracks and down the dark and devious way that led to the surface of the earth.

At the door of the pump-room he met Ralph.  “Uncle Billy!” shouted the boy, “I want to see you; I’ve got sumpthin’ to tell you.”

Two or three men were standing by, watching the pair curiously, and Ralph continued:  “Come up to the tree where they ain’t so much noise; ’twon’t take long.”

He led the way across the level space, up the bank, and into the shadow of the tree beneath which the breaker boys had gathered a year before to pass resolutions of sympathy for Robert Burnham’s widow;

They were no sooner seated on the rude bench than Ralph began:—­

“I ought to ‘a’ told you before, I done very wrong not to tell you, but I couldn’t raise the courage to do it till this mornin’.  Here’s what I want you to know.”

Then Ralph told, with full detail, of his visit to Sharpman’s office on Sunday evening, of what he had heard there, of his subsequent journey through the streets of the city, of his night of agony, of his morning of shame, of his final victory over himself.

Bachelor Billy listened with intense interest, and when he had heard the boy’s story to the end he dashed the tears from his eyes and said:  “Gie’s your han’ Ralph; gie’s your twa han’s!  Ye’re a braw lad.  Son or no son o’ Robert Burnham, ye’re fit to stan’ ony day in his shoes!”

He was looking down with strong admiration into the boy’s pale face, holding the small hands affectionately in both of his.

“I come just as quick as I could,” continued the boy, “after I got over thinkin’ I’d keep still about it, just as quick as I could, to tell you an’ ask you what to do.  I’ll do anything ’at you tell me it’s right to do, Uncle Billy, anything.  If you’ll only say I must do it, I will.  But it’s awful hard to do it all alone, to let ’em know who I am, to give up everything so, an’ not to have any mother any more, nor no sister, nor no home, nor no learnin’, nor nothing; not anything at all, never, any more; it’s terrible!  Oh, Uncle Billy, it’s terrible!”

Then, for the first time since the dreadful words of Rhyming Joe fell on his ears in the darkness of Sharpman’s office, Ralph gave way to tears.  He wept till his whole frame shook with the deep force of his sobs.