“What a Quixotism of Burroughs’s to try to educate this stupid fellow!” muttered Mr. Barlow to a friend who lounged beside his table; and Teddy, hearing the criticism upon his patron, felt an added weight fall upon his own conscience.

“They laugh at him because I’m stupid, and I’m stupid because I’m thinking of what I’ve done.  It’s good that they’ll soon be shut of me altogether.  Maybe I can sweep the crossings, or clean the gutters,” thought poor miserable Teddy, bending afresh to his task.

Mr. Burroughs did not come so soon as expected; and Mr. Barlow became quite impatient of the constant inquiry addressed to him by Teddy as to the probable movements of his master.  At last, about noon of Friday, he walked into the office, looking more cheerful and like his old self than he had been since the heavy sorrow had fallen upon the household so near to his heart.

Mr. Barlow greeted him heartily, and, calling him into the inner office, closed the door; while Teddy remained without, his heart beating with a sick hard throb, a tingling pain creeping from his brain to the ends of his icy fingers, and his whole frame trembling with agitation.

It was no light task that he had set himself; and so he well knew.  To stand before the man he loved and reverenced before all men and say to him that he had been for months deliberately deceiving and injuring him and his; to confess that he had not once, but persistently, refused the only chance ever offered him of repaying, in some measure, the kindness and generosity of his patron; to acknowledge grateful,—­oh! it was no light task that the boy had set himself; and yet his resolution never faltered.

Great acts are only great in the light of the actor’s previous history and training; and perhaps the atonement Teddy now contemplated was for him as heroic as that of the martyred bishop who held the hand that had signed the recantation steadily in the flame until it was consumed.

The door of the office opened, and the two gentlemen were passing out together, when Teddy started up,—­

“If you please, sir, might I speak with you by yourself?”

“Oh, yes!  Teddy has been very anxious for an interview with you all the week.  I will go on, and expect you down there presently,” said Mr. Barlow.

“Yes, in two minutes.  Come in here, Teddy, and let us hear what you have to say.”

Mr. Burroughs threw himself into the chair he had just quitted, and stirred the fire, saying good-humoredly,—­

“Out with it, my boy!  What’s amiss?”

Teddy, standing beside the table, one clammy hand grasping the edge of it, seemed to feel the floor heave beneath his feet, and the whole room to reel and swim before his eyes.  His tongue seemed paralyzed, his lips quivered, his voice came to his own ears strange and hollow; but still he struggled on, resolute to reach the worst.

“It’s about the little girl that was lost, sir, your little cousin Antoinette.”