Her husband was out, and she sat, propped up in a chair behind the board that served for a counter, still attending to the shop; and thus it was that her son beheld her when he stooped under the low doorway, with the one word, “Mother.”

Dermot had waited outside, but Harold called him in the next moment.  “He will mind the shop, mother.  I’ll carry you to your bed.  You are not fit to be here a moment.”

And Dermot found himself selling tobacco, tin cups, and knives to very rough-looking customers, some of whom spoke in as refined a voice as he could do, and only asked what green chum the parson could have picked up instead of the sickly missus.

Alice Smith was indeed far gone in illness, the effect of exposure, drudgery, and hard usage.  Perhaps her husband might have had mercy on her, but they were both cowed by the pitiless brute of a step-son, whose only view was to goad her into driving their profitable traffic to her last gasp.  But there was no outbreak between them and Harold.  The father’s nature was to cringe and fawn, and the son estimated those thews and muscles too well to gratify his hatred by open provocation, and was only surly and dogged, keeping himself almost entirely out of the way.  Alice wanted nothing but to look at her son—­“her beautiful boy,” “her Harry come back to her at last;” and kind and tender to her and loving, as he had never been since his baby days; but he would have moved heaven and earth to obtain comforts and attendance for her.  Dermot rode a fabulous distance, and brought back a doctor for a fabulous fee, and loaded his horse with pillows and medicaments; but the doctor could only declare that she had a fatal disease of long standing and must die, though care and comfort might a little while prolong her life.  It was welcome news to poor Alice, provided she might only die while her boy was still with her, shutting out all that had so long made her life one ground-down course of hopeless wretchedness.

Smith’s most profitable form of employment was carrying dinners out to the men at work; and for an hour or two at noon the little store was entirely free from customers.  The day after the doctor’s visit, Dermot came in at this time to speak to Harold, and as soon as Alice knew of his presence (there was a mere partition of slab between her bed and the shop), she eagerly and nervously bade him stay and keep watch that no one should come near to see or hear.  Then, when certain that she was alone with her son, she produced from hiding-places about her person what appeared to be three balls of worsted—­ her eyes gleaming, and her whole person starting at every sound.  She laid her skeleton fingers over them with a start of terror, as Harold, puzzled at first, would have unwound one; but made him weigh them, parted the covering with her nail, and showed for one instant a yellow gleam.  Each held a nugget of unusual size!  Her urgency and her