86 ROBERT DAWSON.

And I followed him into a long, narrow. dining-

room. —
. “TI see it was best forme to come. He is hurried,”
I said to myself. This, indeed, gave me satisfaction.
But I felt little appetite, and stupidly did I answer the
few questions they put to me. My heart was almost
as heavy as my eyelids.

After supper, Mr. Simpson and his men hastened
back to the office. I escaped into the yard, in order
to avoid the conversation of the family. “Wearily did
I sit down upon, the side of a trough near the well,
with nothing like a definite impression upon my mind,
- until my left hand was carelessly thrust into my pocket,
and out came a small quarter of the last dough-nut.

“Oh, home! home! home!” I sighed piteously, as
the old kitchen fire, with its beloved circle, came up
vividly before me in the darkness of that evening,
“There is Charley Frazier at his home. I wish I was
Charley; I do, indeed! What an_easy lot is his—
and mine, how hard!” So I soliloquised over the

last crumb of my last dough-nut.